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DEATH OF U.S. HEALTHCARE
By DICK MORRIS
Published on TheHill.com on May 12, 2009
When all of America's top health insurers and providers met at the White House
this week and pledged to save $2 trillion over the next decade in health costs,
they were pledging to sabotage our medical care. The blunt truth, which
everybody agreed to keep quiet, is that the only way to reduce these costs is to
ration healthcare, thereby destroying our system.
Here's why:
• Essential to any cost reduction is a cut in doctors' fees. Congress is trying
to cut Medicare fees by 21 percent. But cuts in fees and doctors' incomes will
just discourage people from entering the profession and those already in it from
practicing. The limited number of doctors and nurses in the United States is the
key constraint on the availability of healthcare. Our national inventory of
800,000 doctors is growing at only about 1 percent a year (18,000 med school
graduates annually minus retirements), while the nurse population is stagnant at
1.4 million. To stretch these limited resources so that they can treat 50
million more people is possible only through the most severe kind of rationing.
• As in Canada, the best way to cut medical costs is to refrain from using the
best drugs to treat cancer and other illnesses, thereby economizing at the
expense of patients' lives. Forty-four percent of the drugs approved by the
Canadian health authorities for use in their country are not allowed by the
healthcare system due to their high cost. As a result, death rates from cancer
are 16 percent higher in Canada than in the United States. We will pay for the
attempt to save $2 trillion with our lives. (And remember, one cannot opt out of
the Canadian system and pay for the medications out of pocket.)
• The only real way to save money on the scale projected is to ration healthcare
services. Optimists say that this can be achieved by increased use of preventive
care. But the Canadian experience indicates that when government -- or its
satellite private insurance providers -- ration healthcare, they cut preventive
care first. In Canada, colonoscopies are so rationed that the colon cancer rate
is 25 percent higher than in the U.S. (even though Canada has a much smaller
proportion of poor people, whose frequently bad diets make them more prone to
the disease).
Obama's pretension that nobody will find changes in his or her current health
insurance plans except for a magical reduction in their cost by $2,500 a year is
a fool's proposition. Private health insurers will be no more private than
TARP-funded banks or government-subsidized car companies are in Obama's America.
They will be controlled by government healthcare planners who will approve
treatments, limit drug use, hold down medical incomes and bring their
cost-cutting programs to bear. Inevitably, their ax will fall on the oldest and
the sickest among us, those least "deserving" of our newly limited and, under
Obama's program, diminishing healthcare resources.
The other radical changes Obama is bringing about in our nation can always be
reversed. New taxes can be repealed or lowered. That which was nationalized can
be privatized. Government which has grown can be cut. But once the healthcare
system is extended to cover everyone, with no commensurate increase in the
resources available, the change will be forever. The vicious cycle of cuts in
medical resources and in the number of doctors and nurses will doom healthcare
in this country. This wanton destruction will not be reversible by any bill or
program. A crucial part of our quality of life -- the best healthcare in the
world -- will be gone forever.
Politically, voters will feel the impact of these "reforms" very quickly. When
they face rejection or limitation at the hands of the bureaucrats, they will
quickly understand that the their options have become limited. Just as in the
1990s, when HMOs first became universal, the patient outrage will create a
political force all its own and those who foisted this brave new world on
the American people will be in their crosshairs.
Go to DickMorris.com to read all of Dick's columns!