imagine how quickly and dramatically the iPAB provisions will be altered when the news media begin reporting on how some telegenic children or senior citizens will be deprived of vital medical treatment because of the pencil-pushing decision of some isolated group of bureaucratic eggheads…I submit that no legislative language or one-time “repeal window” will prove an impediment to presidential directives and congressional action to countermand IPAB recommendations or terminate the board altogether.
He cites previous attempts by government agencies to highlight cost-ineffective medical treatments. When the firestorm hits, the politicians cave.
Too bad. When people ask me what I think of Obamacare, I always say that the aspect that its best feature is the death panels.
I know people really want to believe this, but the experience of all those other countries with more government organized care show just the opposite. People really see themselves as taxpayers that want to get the greatest bang for the buck and are not at all adverse to saying no to some marginal treatment.
Taxpayers? Or just voters ?
See lords comment.
That makes perfect sense for funding research or denying heart catheters in general, but its not the government’s money.
Perhaps you refer to a second best view.
Why is this problem so much less severe in the UK? It does happen – a recent very stupid political intervention in the process set a different, easier threshold for cancer drugs than other drugs – but it’s not the inevitable disaster you paint here.
Based on my study of actual Medicare claims, ineffective medicine is not the big problem.
The problem is the prices we pay for effective care.
Transplants and bypass surgeries and joint replacements do unquestionably give extra years of life to many Medicare patients.
The problem is that we pay too much for them.
If I ran the IPAB, I would hammer down the prices of transplants etc to $30,000.
Large hospitals will have budget problems, but they have been draining us financially for many years.
Bob Hertz, The Health Care Crusade