ObamaCare: Rationing or just hype?

With apologies to Jon Stewart for my offensive title, but an interesting video deserves some attention.  This is a video of Peter Orszag, Obama's budget director on the implementation of the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB).   Essentially once you get past all the political correctness you will realize that the idea in the long term is to reduce quantity, well, of course increase quality too. If you believe those two are mutually exclusive like the Obama administration then you might also believe that ending all hunger should be accomplished by 2012.   Oh, Bibi just called and apparently he met with Hamas and he is handing Jerusalem over to the Palestinians.  Ok, back to reality.




Yes, we have a problem in this country, no doubt about it.  Our medical cost curve toward end of life looks like a parabola.  This is probably common sense, as people get older they generally consume more health care.  However due to LBJ's great society this consumption generally happens at the expense of taxpayers, this is because if one lives long enough than the consumption far outweighs all the Medicare and/or Medicaid payments one did over the course of his or her life.   This is because when you shield the true cost from people then consumption will rise, that is simple economics.   Medicare and Medicaid as I have written about constantly not only drives up due to need, but also habitually underpays doctors.  Therefore this cost must be recouped elsewhere and this is done via medical inflation.  You seldom see the medical inflation, until the insurance companies hike up premiums.  By then most Americans are willing to take up arms against the greedy insurance companies ignoring the true culprit, 90 million Americans getting cheaper medical care in massive quantities!

So the only way to solve this, as far as the current politicians are concerned is to ration.  This is what ObamaCare will do.  Mind you, this issue has been raised by some in the GOP and instead of thinking and debating they were dubbed insane and shipped off to the fringe.   Of course now that it is law, the Democrats have no problem divulging the gritty details.

There is also a provision inside this bill, I believe implemented by Harry Reid that allows a Senate super-majority to repeal this monstrosity.  67 votes!  Peter Orszag spends some time discussing that very matter. 

The consequences will of course be rather predictable.  IPAB will initially attempt to control pricing on particular areas of medicine.  This will lead to shortages.  In 5, 10 or 20 years some procedures will either not exist or be so rare that it will unaffordable to anyone.  People will die to lack of treatment and this death will go unnoticed and untreated.  But don't be sad, our costs will go down.  Come to think of it, we could probably close down every hospital in America, talk about savings!!