The increasing political toxicity of Britain’s not-so-aptly-named NICE (National Institute of Clinical Excellence) is not a good omen for supporters of ObamaCare and its Independent Payments Advisory Board.
The AMA, a high-profile supporter of Obamacare, has largely been transformed from an association that looks out for — and reflects the opinions of — doctors, into a special-interest group that’s beholden to the federal government and would prefer that doctors stay silent.
Depending on how Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius decides to calculate medical loss ratios — the proportion of premiums that insurers spend on actual medical care (as opposed to on things like 24-hour nurse hotlines or chasing down fraudulent claims) — ObamaCare could cause massive dislocation in the health insurance industry, thus reducing competition and leading to more insurance monopolies, which would then be decried by the very people who caused them.
ObamaCare’s increased regulations, restrictions, and oversight would more adversely affect doctors than those working in any other profession, and they would further undermine the doctor-patient relationship.
In a 2008 speech in Great Britain, President Obama’s nominee to head Medicare and Medicaid under ObamaCare calls for health-care decisions to be made by politicians, not privately; praises the British system and criticizes the “American plan”; and says that a just health system “must, must redistribute wealth from the richer among us to the poorer and the less fortunate. Excellent health care is by definition redistributional.”
Those concerned that ObamaCare would produce an American health-care system that’s all-too-similar to Britain’s National Health Service will find no solace in President Obama’s nomination of Donald Berwick, Harvard professor and staunch advocate of the NHS, to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Insurance companies largely supported ObamaCare because it would require all Americans to buy their product under penalty of law, but ObamaCare’s requirement that insurers cover higher costs without raising prices puts a noose around insurers’ necks — and while they deserve their predicament, the rest of us don’t deserve to be shuttled into government-run health care after the private insurance market’s inevitable collapse.
The truly effective way to lower health-care costs — and to increase fairness at the same time — is to allow all Americans to deduct their full health-care costs (not just their insurance costs) from both their income and payroll taxes, thereby leveling the playing field between those with employer-provided insurance (whose taxes wouldn’t change) and those who purchase insurance on the open market (who would no longer be the only ones taxed on income used to purchase health care). Not only would this actually bring down health costs — while ObamaCare would raise them — without increasing the size or reach of the federal government — while ObamaCare would increase these dramatically — but it would foster adult self-reliance and self-respect, not childlike dependence encouraged by a paternalistic government.
In its “taxpayer-funded propaganda” fliers that it mailed to Medicare recipients to try to sell them on ObamaCare, the Obama administration neglected to mention that — according to the government’s own projections — ObamaCare would cut Medicare by more than $500 billion, would cause 7 million seniors to lose their Medicare Advantage benefits, would increase seniors’ Medicare Part D prescription drug premiums, and (because of cuts in provider payments) would possibly jeopardize seniors’ access to care.