Why We Must Ration Health Care
You have advanced kidney cancer. It will kill you, probably in the next year or two. A drug called Sutent slows the spread of the cancer and may give you an extra six months, but at a cost of $54,000. Is a few more months worth that much?
If you can afford it, you probably would pay that much, or more, to live longer, even if your quality of life wasn’t going to be good. But suppose it’s not you with the cancer but a stranger covered by your health-insurance fund. If the insurer provides this man — and everyone else like him — with Sutent, your premiums will increase. Do you still think the drug is a good value? Suppose the treatment cost a million dollars. Would it be worth it then? Ten million? Is there any limit to how much you would want your insurer to pay for a drug that adds six months to someone’s life? If there is any point at which you say, “No, an extra six months isn’t worth that much,” then you think that health care should be rationed.
In the current U.S. debate over health care reform, “rationing” has become a dirty word. Meeting last month with five governors, President Obama urged them to avoid using the term, apparently for fear of evoking the hostile response that sank the Clintons’ attempt to achieve reform. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed published at the end of last year with the headline “Obama Will Ration Your Health Care,” Sally Pipes, C.E.O. of the conservative Pacific Research Institute, described how in Britain the national health service does not pay for drugs that are regarded as not offering good value for money, and added, “Americans will not put up with such limits, nor will our elected representatives.” And the Democratic chair of the Senate Finance Committee, Senator Max Baucus, told CNSNews in April, “There is no rationing of health care at all” in the proposed reform.
(Continued here.)
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1 Comments:
Great article. Nobody wants to talk about it, but this is the key to controlling taxpayer subsidized health care cost. IF the individual wants to pay for unproven or end-of-life treatments that is their prerogative – in fact, there could be an insurance market just for these individuals. Daschle and Obama’s idea of a quality control review board, similar to NICE mentioned in the article, is necessary to determine what (and when) treatments will be covered.
Sadly, some are already working against this. Mike Enzi (R-Wyoming) has offered amendments in the HELP Committee Health Care legislation that promises "to protect pro-patient plans and prevent rationing." Another of his would "prohibit the government run plan from limiting access to end of life care." Wow, so if this legislation fails, will Enzi mandating that private insurer to provide that today ?
The logic escapes me … how can the Republicans say that government should not be in the health care business and then dictate that benefits be proved from cradle-to-grave ? I thought the Republicans only advocated protecting the unborn and once born, the child was on its own.
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