Home > Opinion > Peter Roff > Health Reform's Dirty Little Secrets: Rationing and Arbitrary Medical Decisions

Health Reform's Dirty Little Secrets: Rationing and Arbitrary Medical Decisions

Reader Comments
Back to blog

It was certainly interesting for me to read the post. Thanks for it. I like such themes and anything connected to this matter. I definitely want to read more on that blog soon. BTW, pretty good design you have here, but don’t you think design should be changed from time to time?
Jane Smith

escorts north of AL 3:13AM July 07, 2010

This reform will not insure the uninsured. It is primarily to gut medicare payments to hospitals. It will tax health insurance plans that people do have insurance and offer second rate medical care by forcing the poor to buy insurance plans. Not only will health care "reform" not work but it will be a disaster. It is a cost cutting measure disguised as a "reform" bill and the supporters of the Democratic Party developed policy are behaving like shills denouncing the "myths" about health care reform. What will be the end legislation once the Senate and House versions are reconciled is a "reform" package that will please nobody and will hurt everyone that isn't filthy rich.
Critics of Obama's "reforms" come from both the left and the right, maybe its time to start listening to them instead of dismissing every critic of this plan as a wacko or a loser.
As a supporter of universal health care, and someone who has been places and seen it working, it should be said that a good deal of what Dems put down as conservative "lies" about this reform aren't lies at all.
The result of this reform will be a two tier health care system that is a cost cutting measure that will hurt the middle class and the poor. The proposals have included such things as openly forcing people to purchase insurance or pay a tax penalty. Some solution to the problem of the uninsured. This is already in effect in Massachusetts.
Medicare reimbursements to hospitals to treat people who are uninsured and go to the emergency room for their only source of treatment have been slashed to the bone and will continue to get cut. This will bankrupt public hospitals that treat the poor.
The current arguments of liberals and conservatives over this plan are a sorry sideshow that largely avoids the main issue which is that this "reform" is a cost cutting measure, just as surely as "charter schools" are a cost cutting measure and not in any way a "reform" of the educational system.
Our politicians are so crooked they have to screw their pants on.

Aloysius Smith of WI 12:59PM January 12, 2010

Exhibiting his usual classiness, Coburn parades a dead breast cancer patient past the jury to support his case against the health reform bill. Coburn prevaricates: "If I had been practicing under the Reid bill, the government would have likely told me I couldn't have done the test that discovered Sheila's cancer because it wasn't approved under CER."
That is a flat fabrication, and Coburn knows it. Diagnostic aspiration of a palpable breast mass is a standard procedure that would be covered under any conceivable insurance system. The Republicans' favorite propaganda tactic of fear-mongering is alive and well in the Senate.

Stan Polanski of NC 4:42PM December 22, 2009

Coburn's a poor loser at that, too, and just getting more desperate as he continues to flounder in his Do-Nothing pandering to special interests.
Snide remarks by Coburn on the Senate floor about pray to bring harm to his opponents just reinforces image of his lack of honor and decorum, any credibility, and just more of the same Republican lunatic ravings. Coburn is an old-school Bush liar who believes his faith makes all his deceptions and lies righteous. His faith is sorely misplaced considering he seems to be representing the devil.
Maybe Okies go for the speaking-in-tongues crud coming for Coburn, but the rest of the country sees a sorry excuse of a man selling his soul to the highest bidder for corruption and cronyism.

Tom of IA 2:18PM December 22, 2009

You'd have to be some sort of senior fellow or other high sounding title not to know that health care always has been rationed and always will be.
Only the very rich can afford literally any kind of medical care, no matter the cost [which means most of the big shots at the nasty Fox channel that lie and distort every day].
As much as I dislike the greedy insurance firms they and government will never have enough money to pay for all experimental procedures, medicines, etc.; otherwise where is the cut-off, at a million, at ten million? Does someone 80-90 really deserve to have a million spent on them if they might only live another few months? [frankly I've had a NDE and don't fear death, much at least]
Our bodies wear out, that's the way it always will be [until robots allow our souls to go on for ...?]
Same with Death Panels, which a Republican Congressman in Georgia first came up with! Older people should think about their last days, I sure don't want piles of painful tubes stuck in me for years, I want to go in relative peace.
So conservatives, quite the lies about Death Panels [Your Idea!], and other such baloney. I grew up conservative but got tired of the hate and disregard for simple facts constantly put out by nuts like Boehner. How can a decent person stand such creeps?

Richard of OH 3:38AM December 20, 2009

There's only one dirty little secret about the health care reform package we now have. It's the $300,000,000 the combine of big pharma, private insurers, and other sectors of the health care "industry" poured into making sure we'd end up with a jerry-built monstrosity as our Holiday Season present. That and the willingness of our elected officials to assure that the combine got its way. The old line about it taking two to tango is right: Republicans and Democrats dancing to the tune of lobbying "Money" yet again.
What Roff is all upset about only the Right-wing knows, for it's straight from their playbook. He really should be more concerned that the cost of health care will only rise further, that portability will remain an issue, and that the world has yet another snapshot of what greed is doing to America.
Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah one and all!

Ron W. Smith of UT 10:17PM December 19, 2009

Yea like socialized health care is going to save America. You have a Marxist president with radical advisors. Mean spirited name calling liberals have America under their control. Bye bye America, you are headed for the trash heap of Socialism.

bullcrapbuster of Can. 7:13PM December 19, 2009

Getting old is getting scarier. I have deep concerns about CER panels. What happens to someone who needs a life-saving emergency surgical procedure; such as repairing a rupturing aorta aneurysm? My 79-year-old husband is with me today because a smart ER physician in our small city hospital four years ago arranged for my husband to be air-lifted to Dallas Baylor where a highly skilled surgical team saved his life after about a six-hour surgery. My husband was fortunate the aneurysm only tore slightly rather than bursting. His brainless internist who had diagnosed "maybe a kidney problem or diverticulosis" is another story. There would have been no time to submit the procedure to a panel and would a panel have decided my husband was too old for such a procedure? Yes, it was expensive. Medicare paid their part and we paid our part--gladly. Some may think we are part of the problem--I agree the costs of hospitals and doctors are terribly high and medical malpractice insurance premiums are terribly high (doctors and hospitals do make mistakes however). At 73 I am in very good health and I pray that I will have the courage to go on when my time comes--I would not want to endure dialysis, for example, to stay alive, but many do and where will the line be drawn? As I said, it's scary.

Old & Scared in OK of OK 11:08AM December 19, 2009

Coburn is a practicing OB-Gyn, and is therefore qualified to opine on health care reform? Okay, so let's ask my mechanic at the local dealership how to return GM to profitability.
Coburn, like every other Republican critic of health care reform, offers only opposition, but never any alternatives.
Why would we want some panel evaluating which procedures and methods of treatment are most effective? Heavens to Betsy, they might suggest to Dr Coburn that he no longer do unnecessary C-sections to keep his malpractice insurance rates down.
Until they can offer viable alternatives to what it is they don't like about what is being proposed, I refuse to waste any more of my time listening to these idiots!

John of OK 2:54PM December 18, 2009

Mandy's point is a good one. Just because CER panel decisions might appear "arbitrary" does not necessarily mean they are.
I'd be willing to bet--but don't know--that they'd be made on a basis similar to that of your average HMO.
Is there a reliable, non-partisan analysis of how these mechanisms would function under the proposed plan? It would be helpful to know what we're really dealing with in this proposal.

Todd of PA 1:52PM December 18, 2009