National Health Service: It's Coming to America

[Warph]

National Health Service: It's Coming to America
By Cal Thomas · Thursday, July 29, 2010

PORTSTEWART, Northern Ireland -- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told a group of liberal activists meeting in Las Vegas they shouldn't worry about not getting the single-payer provision in the new health care law. "We're going to have a public option," Reid said. "It's just a question of when."

Remember the objections conservatives and many Republicans raised during the debate about government-run health care and the danger of eliminating private health insurance, despite its many flaws? Recall that Britain's National Health Service (NHS) was frequently cited as an example of where the U.S. health system might be headed: coverage for all, but with lower quality, long waits for major surgery and denial of care when the government decides the procedure is not "cost effective."

Anyone who believes a U.S. health care system based on the NHS model can somehow fare better than Britain's had better consider this recent headline and story from London's Sunday Telegraph: "Axe Falls on NHS Services; Hip operations, cataract surgery and IVF rationed; Cancer care, maternity, pediatric services at risk."

Rationing? Oh yes, and it is something the unconfirmed, recess-appointed U.S. health care czar, Donald Berwick, strongly favors.

British government leaders had promised to protect frontline services. The Obama administration also made similar promises in order to win enough support from members of Congress, most of whom never read the bill before they voted for it.

Here's what America can look forward to if it follows the NHS model, according to an investigation by the Sunday Telegraph: "Plans to cut hundreds of thousands of pounds (dollars) from budgets for the terminally ill, with dying cancer patients to be told to manage their own symptoms if their condition worsens at evenings or weekends." Never has "take two aspirin and call me in the morning" sounded more callous.

Nursing homes for the elderly would be closed, the number of hospital beds for the mentally ill reduced and general practitioners would be discouraged from sending patients to hospitals. Accident and emergency department services would also be cut.

Thousands of jobs would be lost at NHS hospitals, reports the Telegraph, "including 500 staff to go at a trust where cancer patients recently suffered delays in diagnosis and treatment because of staff shortages." Katherine Murphy of the Patients Association called the cuts "astonishingly brutal." She expressed particular concern at attempts to ration (that word again) hip and knee operations. "These are not unusual procedures," she said. "This is a really blatant attempt to save money by leaving people in pain."

What do politicians care about that? In Britain, as in America, top officials (including Berwick who has lifetime health coverage given to him by the Institute for Health Care Improvement) will always have access to the best care, even while they decide the rest of us cannot.

This paragraph in the Telegraph story should send chills down the spine of every American: "Doctors across the country have already been told that their patients can have the operations only if they are given 'prior approval' by the Primary Care Trust, with each authorization made on a 'case by case' basis."

When cost, rather than the value of life becomes supreme, rationing will inevitably lead to other cost-cutting policies. And yes, despite protestations from those who favored Obamacare that "death panels" would not be part of the equation, you can count on them. They will, of course, be called something else. We wouldn't want to disturb any remaining moral sensibilities we might have.

It has taken the NHS 62 years to get to this point. America's journey should be a lot shorter given the declared goals of Harry Reid and Donald Berwick.

It is more than ironic that this is taking place in the year when Britain is observing the centenary of the revered nurse Florence Nightingale. Given the prevailing attitude toward the value of human life and its care, her replacement might be the likes of Dr. Jack Kevorkian. Hemlock, anyone?

[Warph]

Forbes on ObamaCare Taxes
August 2, 2010

THE BIGGEST TAX INCREASE IN U.S. HISTORY?


President Obama has repeatedly asserted that the new health care reform's individual mandate requiring everyone to have qualified health insurance coverage or pay a penalty is not a tax.  And yet the Department of Justice (DOJ) now claims the mandate is a tax, but not because the legislation refers to the mandate as a tax -- it doesn't.   Rather, the DOJ lawyers want the Supreme Court to confer its blessings on ObamaCare when the issue comes before the Court, and the lawyers are increasingly concerned that the 20-plus state challenge claiming the mandate is unconstitutional may hold up, says Merrill Matthews, a resident scholar with the Institute for Policy Innovation.

The Democratic defense has morphed from the: "Of course we have the constitutional power to impose an individual mandate" defense to, "The Commerce Clause gives us the power to mandate coverage" defense, and now to their, "It's a tax" defense. 

Many conservatives rejoiced at the flip-flop, proclaiming they have caught the president and his administration in one more broken promise: not to raise taxes on families making less than $250,000 a year.  If the mandate really is a tax, it could be the largest in history -- and it affects everyone, says Matthews:

A Kaiser Family Foundation survey of employers last year found that average premiums for an employer-provided family policy, which is more likely to be the type of comprehensive coverage required by ObamaCare, was $13,375, about 25 percent of the median household income of $52,000.

That $13,375 family policy costs the same for both lower- and higher-income workers; so if the mandate is a tax, it's equivalent to a 50 percent income tax on a family making $25,000 a year but a 10 percent income tax on a family making $130,000 a year. Talk about regressive taxes! 

Of course, the Obama administration will argue that it is addressing the regressivity problem by providing a sliding scale subsidy, up to 400 percent of the federal poverty level (about $88,000 for a family of four in 2010), to insulate lower- and middle-income families.   But subsidies don't negate the fact that ObamaCare imposes the tax on every individual in the country.  It simply means that someone else -- i.e., either employers or other taxpayers -- will be paying the tax for millions of Americans, says Matthews.

Source:  Merrill Matthews, "The Biggest Tax Increase in U.S. History?" Forbes, July 26, 2010.

For text:

http://www.forbes.com/2010/07/26/health-care-mandate-barack-obama-opinions-contributors-merrill-matthews.html