Obama's Health Plan Will Succeed (At Getting People to Die Faster)

From Mark Schiller, M.D., at FrontPage Magazine:

Many critics are busy complaining that President Obama's healthcare reform plans are doomed to failure. It would be nice if they would just quit their whining and get back to caring for their polo ponies or something, because it's clear that the plan will be successful. Think about it -- as severely
ill people die more quickly, costs will inevitably be cut.

It's really quite simple. Take cancer treatment. If we can just make sure to treat cancer patients with older, cheaper, more ineffective treatments, then treatment will actually be more effective -- at cutting costs as more cancer patients die. We not only save the cost of more expensive medication -- we also save by relying on less expensive stays in hospices instead of more extended active treatments.

More importantly, if we can help patients die quickly now, then we can save on the cost of any future major illnesses they would've had that would have cost society a whole boatload of money. Basically, one severe potentially terminal illness is cheaper than two. Some cancer patients may try to demand more up-to-date, effective treatments, but society must obviously ignore their selfish desires to live.

The Obama plan is going to accomplish this with its billion-dollar investment in "comparative-effectiveness research." This is a coup, because it sounds so rational and scientific. A sophisticated observer can see that it will be "comparatively effective" at reducing the rate at which new, more effective treatments are utilized. The kind of large, expensive studies required to prove that newer treatments are less effective at killing off patients will be so difficult to conduct that the newly created "Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research" (or FCCCER, pronounced faux care) will have cover for many years before it's compelled to approve any new treatment.

Such is the excellent model provided by Great Britain's National Institute for Clinical Excellence, known by the wonderful acronym NICE. Indeed it was "NICE" how the agency "regrettably" found last summer that four admittedly "clinically effective" lifesaving medications for kidney cancer were not "cost-effective uses of NHS resources." NICE has been wildly successful in shortening the overall amount of time that the British medical system is forced to treat cancer patients. In Great Britain, survival rates after a cancer diagnosis range from 40.2 to 48.1 percent for men and 48 to 54.1 percent for women. The United States currently boasts an inefficiently high rate of 66 percent for men and 63 percent for women.

See also, Kim Priestap, "Ezekiel Emanuel: Deny Coverage to Elderly and Disabled for the Greater Good."