U.S. Patients to Face Long Waits, Lower Quality

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., told a group of liberal
activists meeting in Las Vegas they shouldn't worry about not getting
the single-payer provision in the new health care law. "We're going to
have a public option," Reid said. "It's just a question of when."

Remember the objections conservatives and many Republicans raised
during the debate about government-run health care and the danger of
eliminating private health insurance, despite its many flaws?

Recall that Britain's National Health Service was frequently cited as
an example of where the U.S. health system might be headed: coverage
for all, but with lower quality, long waits for major surgery and denial
of care when the government decides the procedure is not "cost
effective."

Anyone who believes a U.S. health care system based on the NHS model
can somehow fare better than Britain's had better consider this recent
headline and story from London's Sunday Telegraph: "Axe Falls on NHS
Services; Hip operations, cataract surgery and IVF rationed; Cancer
care, maternity, pediatric services at risk."

Rationing? Oh yes, and it is something the unconfirmed, recess-appointed U.S. health care czar, Donald Berwick, strongly favors.

British government leaders had promised to protect frontline
services. The Obama administration also made similar promises in order
to win enough support from members of Congress, most of whom never read
the bill before they voted for it.

Here's what America can look forward to if it follows the NHS model,
according to an investigation by the Sunday Telegraph: "Plans to cut
hundreds of thousands of pounds from budgets for the terminally ill,
with dying cancer patients to be told to manage their own symptoms if
their condition worsens at evenings or weekends." Never has "take two
aspirin and call me in the morning" sounded more callous.

Nursing homes for the elderly would be closed, the number of hospital
beds for the mentally ill reduced and general practitioners would be
discouraged from sending patients to hospitals. Accident and emergency
department services would also be cut.

Thousands of jobs would be lost at NHS hospitals, reports the
Telegraph, "including 500 staff to go at a trust where cancer patients
recently suffered delays in diagnosis and treatment because of staff
shortages." Katherine Murphy of the Patients Association called the cuts
"astonishingly brutal."

She expressed particular concern at attempts to ration (that word
again) hip and knee operations. "These are not unusual procedures," she
said. "This is a really blatant attempt to save money by leaving people
in pain."

What do politicians care about that? In Britain, as in America, top
officials (including Berwick, who has lifetime health coverage given to
him by the Institute for Health Care Improvement) will always have
access to the best care, even while they decide the rest of us cannot.

This paragraph in the Telegraph story should send chills down the
spine of every American: "Doctors across the country have already been
told that their patients can have the operations only if they are given
'prior approval' by the Primary Care Trust, with each authorization made
on a 'case by case' basis."

When cost, rather than the value of life, becomes supreme, rationing
will inevitably lead to other cost-cutting policies. And yes, despite
protestations from those who favored Obamacare that "death panels" would
not be part of the equation, you can count on them.

They will, of course, be called something else. We wouldn't want to disturb any remaining moral sensibilities we might have.

Source:http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/07/30/obamacare_means_lower_quality_long_waits_106553.html