The question, they say, is not whether there will be rationing, but rather what will be rationed, and when and how.
The dirty little secret unspoken in the halls of Washington is that every government-centralized and administered health care system results in some form of rationing according to a Washington Post article today. Ultimately, bureaucrats must make rationing decisions.
This, perhaps, is the source of accusation for the so-called "death panels" by opponents of ObamaCare. Although rationing is not specified in the HR 3200 bill itself, as documented by FactCheck.org, the reality--as pointed out by the Washington Post article--is that any in government-controlled health care system, by government officials must ultimately make the tough decisions as which procedures get funded, and which procedures fall below the cut line . Nobody wants to call it rationing--and it's never mentioned in the bills now before Congress--but in practice, that becomes the unfortunate result.
Further, President Obama, claims he will save billions of dollars in health care savings by increasing incentives for preventative medicine. Once again, these claims might never materialize, because administering more tests, in an attempt to catch illness before it progresses to the high-cost treatment stage, will tend to increase costs rather than decrease.
Why? For example, tens of thousands of healthy patients must be tested before finding the handful of patients who test positive. The article goes on to suggest that many of these tests are defensive in nature to avoid litigation from over-zealous, ambulance-chasing lawyers. Read the complete article Washington Post article here.
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