Myth 33. Reducing geographic disparities will reduce spending without sacrificing quality.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010 at 12:26AM The cure for excessive U.S. medical spending, according to prominent academics as well as Peter Orszag, director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), is called the “30% solution.”
Its basis is the Dartmouth Atlas, produced by the Dartmouth Health Policy Group, whose leaders concluded that “if we sent 30% of the doctors in this country to Africa, we might raise the level of health on both continents.”
Myth 32. Information technology will improve efficiency and safety.
Thursday, January 7, 2010 at 09:05PM A large part of the savings projected from “healthcare reform” is supposed to come from wider use of information technology. The federal government is expected to “invest” some $45 billion in encouraging (or compelling) doctors and hospitals to use electronic records systems.
Myth 31. “Healthcare reform” bills will increase doctors’ pay while “saving” nearly half a trillion Medicare dollars.
Sunday, January 3, 2010 at 02:38AM Legislation heavily promoted by the AMA and passed by the House of Representatives, H.R. 3961, would eliminate the 21% scheduled Medicare pay cut for doctors required by the sustained growth rate (SGR) formula. Yearly last-minute reprieves have postponed the cuts year after year; the accumulated 21% is now coming due.
Myth 30. Healthcare reform is not “socialized medicine.”
Thursday, December 24, 2009 at 04:40PM Many critics of the Democrats’ “healthcare reform” call it “socialized medicine.” Advocates respond, condescendingly, that since the government would not own the means of production, and physicians would not be salaried by the American equivalent of the British National Health Service, this is not socialism. Physicians and hospitals would still be “private,” as in Canada.
Myth 29. Health care reform will not increase abortions or lead to federal funding of abortion—or of other parts of a radical social agenda.
Monday, December 7, 2009 at 06:18PM The Democrat’s reform plans would have a powerful ally—the Roman Catholic Church and its huge network of hospitals—were it not for the perception that plans as currently drafted would permit taxpayer funding of abortions. Without the Stupak Amendment, legislation probably would not have passed the House. A similar battle on amendments is likely to occur in the Senate.
Myth 28. Healthcare reform bills will not cover illegal aliens.
Monday, December 7, 2009 at 02:00AM The growing number of “48 million uninsured” includes perhaps 15 million illegal aliens (Phoenix Business Journal 7/22/09).
Obama’s statement that “ the reforms I’m proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally” elicited the notorious “You lie” outburst from Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC).
Myth 27. Healthcare reform is affordable.
Saturday, December 5, 2009 at 01:42AM Calling something affordable, even in the title, doesn’t make it so.
Making somebody else pay the bill doesn’t make it affordable either. A massive redistribution scheme adds costs, and makes the total cost less affordable.
Myth 26. Government-directed rationing will be rational.
Saturday, November 28, 2009 at 09:04PM It all sounds very reasonable: to set priorities, to use the most effective therapies, to serve the neediest first. Rationing is a given, say reform advocates. Insurance companies already do it. Let’s just make it rational and fair.
Some say that Comparative Effectiveness Research (CER) isn’t really about rationing. “Nothing in the legislation…provided for payment restriction based on CER findings,” writes Jerry Avorn (N Engl J Med 2009;360:1927-1929). It’s “Orwellian” to suggest such a thing. Anyway, “unaffordability rations care far more than comparative studies ever could.”
Myth 25. Medical care costs too much because private corporations make a profit.
Monday, November 16, 2009 at 12:41AM In his address to Congress on health care reform, Barack Obama cited Alabama as a state in which almost 90% of health insurance is controlled by one company. “[A]n additional step we can take to keep insurance companies honest is by making a not-for-profit public option available in the insurance exchanges.”
Myth 24. Medicare is the model of efficiency and fairness.
Sunday, October 18, 2009 at 08:36PM Medicare is immensely popular, has very low administrative costs, is already a working model,… it is said: Why not just have Medicare for all?
At one time, calling Medicare “socialized medicine for the elderly” caused stunned silence in the Congress. Now, if one opposes “socialized medicine,” at least one listener is bound to dare you to say you’re opposed to Medicare.
Myth 23. Private insurance and self-payment are relics of an oppressive past, confined to the United States and backwater, poorly developed nations.
Monday, October 12, 2009 at 02:08AM We constantly hear that the United States is the only nation in the “developed,” or “industrialized” world (we no longer say “civilized” world or “free” world) that doesn’t have taxpayer-funded medical care for all.
It is therefore past time for the U.S. to relinquish the traditional idea that “the voluntary way is the American way” and join the “progressive” march to coercive, state-funded and state-directed medicine—as instituted by Chancellor Otto von Bismarck in Germany in 1884.
Myth 22. “Health care reform” is a moral imperative
Thursday, October 8, 2009 at 01:34AM In a telephone call to clergymen, also broadcast over the internet, Obama dismissed the concerns of opponents of his health agenda as “fabrications.” Dissenters were making up allegations about death panels, government funding of abortions, and a government takeover of medicine, he said, because they want to “discourage people from meeting…a core ethical and moral obligation…that we look out for one another…that I am my brother’s keeper”
Myth 21. Proposed health care reform would offer more choices.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009 at 10:08PM White House spokesman Robert Gibbs used the phrase “choice and competition” three times, and variations on the words “choice” and “competition” five times each, in a 1 minute, 10 second interview with CBS’s Face the Nation, noted Mike Gonzalez. That is once every 8.7 seconds.
Myth 20. Doctors, not bureaucrats, make decisions in national health systems.
Thursday, September 17, 2009 at 01:48PM Obama has promised that doctors, not bureaucrats, will be making the decisions under his “health care reform” plan.
If Obama’s promise is true, why do central planners need extensive data on every encounter with every patient?
Myth 19: The American people are demanding “health care now.”
Thursday, September 10, 2009 at 02:09AM Spokesmen for the Democrats’ “health care reform” proposals say that all those ordinary-appearing Americans waving hand-made signs are either operatives of powerful vested interests, especially insurance companies, or “political enemies” bent on destroying the Obama presidency.
Myth 18: Proposed health care reform will not hasten the death of seniors, cancer patients, and disabled persons.
Thursday, August 27, 2009 at 09:54PM The phrase “death panel” does not actually occur in any of the proposed “health care reform” bills. MoveOn.org has seized on Sarah Palin’s characterization of the outcome of “reform” in its mass email piece entitled “Top Five Health Care Reform Lies: and How to Fight Back”:
Myth 17: Health care reform will establish a right to health care.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009 at 12:51AM Everybody in a country with “universal health care” has a “right” to health care, but Americans do not—or so it is argued. “Health care reform” is supposed to correct a moral deficiency in the United States, and, at long last, grant a fundamental human right to Americans.
Myth 16. In countries with government-funded health care, people get immediate care in emergencies, though they may have to wait for elective procedures.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009 at 02:14AM The usual response to concerns about the months-long waiting lists for surgery in Canada and Britain is that this is a mere inconvenience, a small price to pay for universal “free” care.
Myth 15. Nationalized medicine will reduce medical errors, improve care, and save lives.
Monday, August 10, 2009 at 10:38PM Based on 173 deaths in the Harvard Medical Practice study, and extrapolating to the entire U.S. population, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) has been claiming for almost a decade that as many as 98,000 Americans are killed by medical errors every year.
Myth 14: We must choose between the “status quo” and the Democrats’ “reform” plan
Monday, August 10, 2009 at 10:38PM The strategy during the August recess was outlined by Paul Begala, a Democrat strategist close to the White House: “Supporters of reform have to put the status quo on trial”