Where We Are Heading – Part Two
• As in Canada, the best way to cut medical costs is to refrain from using the best drugs to treat cancer and other illnesses, thereby economizing at the expense of patients’ lives. Forty-four percent of the drugs approved by the Canadian health authorities for use in their country are not allowed by the healthcare system due to their high cost. As a result, death rates from cancer are 16 percent higher in Canada than in the United States. We will pay for the attempt to save $2 trillion with our lives. (And remember, one cannot opt out of the Canadian system and pay for the medications out of pocket.)
• The only real way to save money on the scale projected is to ration healthcare services. Optimists say that this can be achieved by increased use of preventive care. But the Canadian experience indicates that when government – or its satellite private insurance providers – ration healthcare, they cut preventive care first. In Canada, colonoscopies are so rationed that the colon cancer rate is 25 percent higher than in the U.S. (even though Canada has a much smaller proportion of poor people, whose frequently bad diets make them more prone to the disease).
Obama’s pretension that nobody will find changes in his or her current health insurance plans except for a magical reduction in their cost by $2,500 a year is a fool’s proposition……
At some point, the AARP will wake up to the fact that Obama Care will mean that older Americans will be denied certain procedures because they “don’t work” – a phrase Peter Orszag has been using over and over again. Ultimately, no medical treatment works , as far as keeping people alive forever.
The government announced that both Social Security and Medicaid would be going broke sooner than expected. Obama’s mad plans will heap another couple of trillion dollars into an already unsustainable budget. The system is heading for a collapse.
And rationing and a failing system is the best outcome we can expect from Obama Care.
A reminder, this is not my interpretation of what is now being openly talked about. This is straight from the advocates of these “cost cutting methods”.
Be careful what you wish for. Be even more careful what you vote for.
By Dorf, May 14, 2009 @ 6:40 pm
AARP is a [for profit/not for profit] organization depending on the %…..