Health Care Reform School

Well, it has begun. He promised us that he would reform the healthcare system, even though we have the greatest healthcare system in the world (though, as I have said previously, we could stand to fix some of the problems we have in financing it), and he has started the process.

The "he" I refer to is of course President Obama. (I had no idea how hard it was going to be to type those words: President Obama. My fingers locked up in protest.) You will recall what I thought about his healthcare reform plan before the election. It's a pity we can't send him and his cronies to reform school.

My county medical society just had a meeting at which our state medical society president attended and spoke to us at length about the process that is now unfolding. It was somewhat vague and lacking details about the plan, mainly because the details haven't been fleshed out yet. However, this hasn't stopped people from speculating about what the plan will be like, based mostly on the fact that, though kept out of a direct leadership position in the debate due to his seeming inability to report and pay income tax on over half million dollars of income, Tom Daschle will still be having a significant behind-the-scenes influence on the plan. And unfortunately, he will likely be more dangerous in this new, non-public position. Why do those of us who prefer a free-market healthcare system (though we haven't had one in this country in over a half century) fear Daschle so? Because he's already told us where he wants to take healthcare in this country, and it's a place most reasoning people don't want to go.

Take a look at this speculation. I love some of the statements made here.

But tucked into the 700+ billion dollar “stimulus” plan is the digitizing of medical records and a board that will decide whether a type of care is necessary. This is merely code for the rationing of health care.

No, this is a description of how they intend to carry out rationing. It is a promise, not code words.

Larry Summers of the National Economics Council chaired a session on tackling costs, which included suggestions to change the way doctors and hospitals are paid and even placing limits on how much and what kind of care patients can receive. Again, this is simply code for rationing.

Again, not so much code words as a promise that care will be rationed.

Tort reform has got to be part of any health care reform package but at the “summit,” it wasn’t discussed.

Anyone holding their breath waiting for that to be a part of this reform package is going to die of hypoxia. When the party of the trial lawyers is in charge of the reform, does anyone really expect there to be any limitations on the ability of the sharks to feed? No, by limiting what we doctors can do to protect ourselves, this "reform" will be more akin to throwing chum in the waters to attract more of the sharks. Our state medical society president holds the opinion that tort reform will be considered. I'm watching her to see when she's going to start turning blue.

Finally, the article quotes Democratic Senator Max Baucus:

"...so we have to have our uniquely American health care solution, it has to be both public and private. My goal is to keep that mix of public and private, that uniquely American result with which a lot of Americans, the vast majority of Americans are very comfortable.”

I don't hold out much hope here. I expect these idiots to ram down our throats a system that will be completely run or at least under the complete control of the government. Furthermore, I expect this system will be set up such that no doctor will be allowed to operate outside of the system (because otherwise they couldn't control the costs) and that any doctor that tries will be hunted down and prosecuted with a fanaticism that we could only wish had ever been applied to the war on illegal drugs.

There's an even more interesting passage in this essay that comes toward the end. I'll take that on in my next post.