Health Care BS

Robert Goldberg has a mordant op-ed in the Washington Times about Barack Obama’s plan to “reform” U.S. health care. Here is his succinct description of Obamacare:

Mr. Obama plans to make Medicaid and State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) expansion the foundation of his proposal to expand coverage. He would make private health insurance affordable by having the government force doctors to accept below-cost rates for their services and impose a 4 percent tax on physician earnings. Then he would have a national health board determine which drugs and procedures the government would pay for under his new plan.

If it’s not obvious that this is bad news, consider what has happened in states where such policies have already been tried:

Many states have used the same approaches to cover the uninsured and to make existing premiums less expensive. Instead of doing so, such proposals have driven many doctors out of government-run programs and have rationed access to new medicines. Private insurers are leaving markets. And patients who are forced to wait months for needed care often wind up not getting the medicines they need.

This last issue relating to the denial of proper medications will certainly become a serious and widespread problem if Obama’s wrong-headed policies are enacted:

Mr. Obama would also create a new health board to create lists of “cost effective” new drugs and medical devices, and set prices for their payment. Similar review boards in Canada and Europe delay access to new medicines by months or years and are biased by cost-containment considerations.

This “health board” would emulate Great Britain’s ironically named NICE, whose many outrageous policies include the refusal to provide up-to-date cancer drugs to desperately ill patients.

This is the kind of “change” we’re going to get if the voters are foolish enough to put Barack Obama in the White House.