Concierge Medicine vs. the Government HMO; Your Choice

The Wall Street Journal just published a brilliant article entitled, “Obama Will Ration Your Healthcare.” So why is this article so brilliant and why am I so confident that this is true?

Tom Daschle is Obama’s choice for secretary of Health and Human Services.   As the Journal points out, “Mr. Daschle complains about overuse of new technology and praises the United Kingdom’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), a rationing system that controls government costs. NICE’s denial of care is legendary — from the arthritis drug Abatacept to the lung cancer drug Tarceva. These drugs are effective. It’s just that the bureaucrats don’t consider them cost effective.”

It is not just “Obamaphobia” (the opposite of Obamamania) which makes me so confident that medical care will be rationed by a government oversight board, just like an HMO.  There is simply no other way to run such a system.  If patients on a national plan had a blank checkbook for their medical care, the system would go bankrupt long before the projected insolvency of Medicare.  There is only so much money that Congress can appropriate for healthcare.  Somebody has to ration that taxpayer money.  If the money is controlled by the government, who else but government bureaucrats will decide what care gets rationed?  You, the patient?  Your doctor?  Hardly.  There will be some group of people, equivalent to “medical directors” at an HMO, who decide if, when and at what age you can get your knee replacement.

My advice:  Maintain your private medical care if at all possible.  If you are relatively healthy, look into a high-deductible health insurance plan linked to a Health Savings Account (HSA).  Start putting money away in that HSA for a rainy day.  Find a “concierge physician” or doctor with whom you can establish a direct financial relationship; someone who will act as your medical advocate in a system that is broken and will only get worse.  You get what you pay for and medicine today is no different. 

All indications are that there will be attempts to ram a national healthcare program through Congress early in the Obama administration.  They will create a false sense of urgency, just as they did with the “financial bailout” of our economy.  No time to study the issue; this must be done or the society will collapse!  Tom Daschle has studied Hillary Clinton’s failed national healthcare attempt and he does not want to make the same mistakes she made.  He was just quoted in the WSJ as saying that the new Congress needs to act quickly.  “We need to be on the offense.  This time around, lawmakers cannot try to address every detail when it comes to legislation.  Details kill.”  Daschle said.

“Details kill?”  “Lawmakers cannot try to address every detail?”  We are just going to guarantee medical coverage for every American on the backs of the American taxpayer and we don’t have time to discuss the details of how it will work or how it will be paid for?  Every good lawyer I’ve ever retained has reminded me that the devil is in the details!  It looks like we are in for a devil-of-a-new program.