Free medicine! That’s what Obamacare has brought you — or should bring you, at least according to CNN.
The story’s opening sentence sets the tone: “Contraceptives, sterilization, and reproductive education should be covered by health insurance plans with no cost to patients under the health reform law, a new report recommends.”
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In a tone that can only be called cheerleading, CNN tells its audience that the Institute of Medicine has made these recommendations to the secretary of Health and Human Services. “Historic” is the way Secretary Kathleen Sebelius described the report, adding that “we will release the Department’s recommendations of what additional preventive services for women should be covered without cost sharing very soon.”
Now, why, you may wonder, does the secretary of Health and Human Services get to decide whether to adopt the report’s recommendations? Well, under Obamacare, health care has been nationalized. Among the roughly 700 references in the law to “the Secretary shall” is one mandating that the Secretary shall decide which health-care plans are acceptable in America and which are not. If a plan does not comply with HHS mandates, companies and individuals who purchase their products will have to pay a fine. In other words, under Obamacare, the secretary of HHS decides who gets covered for what.
The secretary is now considering whether all health plans in America will have to cover birth control, annual HIV tests, well-woman care visits, annual counseling on sexually transmitted diseases, breastfeeding support and counseling including rental of breast pumps, and screening and counseling for interpersonal and domestic abuse. These services should be covered “without any co-pays or deductibles,” the report by the Institute of Medicine urges. In other words, these products and services should be “free” for all women, not just for the poor.
CNN quotes the president of the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, Dr. James Martin Jr., who believes that “unimpeded access to affordable contraceptives for all women is foundational.”
But why stop there? The biggest killer of women is heart disease. Shouldn’t cholesterol tests, EKGs, and stress tests be covered by insurance at no cost to the women themselves? And surely counseling about the risks of a high-fat diet and sedentary lifestyle should be included too, no? At no cost to the patients, of course. And then there’s cancer, the second biggest threat to women’s health. So mammograms and annual doctor visits should be free. And certainly counseling about the dangers of smoking, excessive drinking, and poor diet should be “fully covered” as well. Come to think of it, gym memberships should definitely be covered at no cost to the women.
But what about men? Men are far less likely than women to seek medical treatment. And men are dropping every year from heart attacks, strokes, accidents, and cancer. Surely if their “well-man” annuals were “free” they would be more likely to get the treatment and preventive care they need.
And what about helpless children? Surely only an ogre would want to charge children a fee to get their vaccinations, check-ups, and medicine? And certainly adolescents should receive counseling about sexuality, date rape, drugs, and alcohol? Shall we say monthly? Perhaps weekly?
Secretary Sebelius praised the IOM report as “based on science and existing literature.” By literature she perhaps means Cinderella, in which a kindly fairy godmother waves a magic wand and produces dresses, coaches, and jewels “at no cost” to Cinderella. She surely cannot mean the medical literature.
Although the Obama administration never tires of repeating this falsehood, the science does not support the claim that increased spending on preventive care reduces overall costs. The journal Health Affairs has studied the literature and concluded, “Over the four decades since cost-effectiveness analysis was first applied to health and medicine, hundreds of studies have shown that prevention usually adds to medical costs instead of reducing them. Medications for hypertension and elevated cholesterol, diet and exercise to prevent diabetes, and screening and early treatment for cancer all add more to medical costs than they save.”
An administration that preens about its “evidence-based” policymaking constantly errs about what medical research has shown. But even more flagrantly, it fails to grasp the very first lesson of economics: Nothing is free. Someone will pay. As the great P. J. O’Rourke put it many years ago, “If you think health care is expensive now, just wait till it’s free.”
Next, of course, we'll require medical providers to take vows of poverty.
Then, the medical establishment will self-terminate, and we'll be treating ourselves with Band-Aids and Mercurochrome, just like the old days.
I appreciate the intent of the column to take a stupid idea to a point of utterly logical absurdity, but the proponents of the health care law think this is all a great idea. They aren't laughing.
Currently what I resent most is that Medicare premiums are automatically deducted from Social Security checks at age 65. From what I have been able to read on SS' website, there is no option to use other insurance and skip these premiums. Some people work past 65 and have employer-provided insurance, and don't need Medicare. If anyone knows more about this, especially if there is an opt-out based on other insurance, please post. Thanks.
One of the worst effects will be increased usage on the "well, I'm paying for it anyway" theory. Right now with copays I don't visit the doctor for every twinge. It costs me in time and cash.
Once health care is "free" I'm a fool not to visit for every twinge. After all, I'm paying via taxes for everyone who does. I should make sure I get my "fair share" of the "free" health care instead of paying for what I think is the best trade-off now.
Of course, as the UK and Canada have shown we'll have fewer doctors because "free" care doesn't pay as well as paid for care. So, more demand and fewer providers is going to make for really quality care.
When you run your own business, you quickly learn that nothing is free. We pay $12,000 per year now for health insurance, it does not take a quantum physisist to figure out that all of these "free" services will result in higher premiums. It is so easy to avoid economic realities when other people are footing the bill; whether it is an employer or the government. Nothing in life is ever free, the buck has to stop somewhere. Employees often have a hard time seeing that if their employer has to pay higher premiums, then they will not get a raise, so they are still paying for it themselves. It amazes me how these bureaucrats get praised for being so intelligent, but they can't even do the simplest math that would help them comprehend that nothing is ever free.
Cicero's first law of economics: "debt expands to meet the money allotted to it." Once government is in control of all medical care, their answer to every problem will be throw money at it. (See Medicare and Medicaid) At present, it seems that fully one third of all Medicare and Medicaid money is spent fraudulently. That does not portent well for the taxpayer.
If the citizens were able to buy insurance coverage based on what they needed and were willing to go into their own pocket for, we would have real reform.
The real agenda is to force the taxpayers to pay for the lifestyles and bad choices of the Progressive base.
The really sad thing about all this is that, according to rules of fairness that Obamanationcare defines and the rhetoric leading up to its passage, we were already paying for a "free" national healthcare plan.
Obamanationcare imposes an 80% medical loss mandate on private health insurers. The UMMC realizes slightly less than 30% medical losses, even while Democrats were saying that we already paid for half of the medical procedures in the country.
If we just applied that same 80% medical loss mandate to the UMMC, we'd be paying for all the medical procedures in the country, with plenty let over to cover all the previously uninsured (including illegal transients) and some to spare, using the same budgetary levels that the UMMC had in 2007.
Private insurers meet that 80% mandate, pay providers fairly and make a profit, too. Since they are smaller than the government programs, they can't realize the same economies of scale that government programs do. We should be able to expect them to meet an even higher medical loss ratio than the private sector.
I don't know what the UMMC is, but government doesn't do anything more efficiently than the private sector. Not by a long shot.
That's not its function - the function of any bureaucracy is to grow the bureaucracy. Doesn't matter if it's NASA, the Dept. of Education, the ethanol debacle, whatever.
The stated charter of any bureacracy runs a distant second to the prime directive, which is spend other people's money as lavishly as you can and then insist on budget increases next year. That's why so many inept, incompetent and no-show bureaucrats have such a drastically higher standard of living than their private sector counterparts.
And there's no redress; government can't fire them and the taxpayer can't appeal to a higher authority. Nothing on this planet is so formidable, intractable and threatening to individual freedom as the lowest-level bureaucrat wielding the power of the state.
Obamacare has nothing to do with health care. It is about theft on a scale never before imagined, and it's about exerting control over an abject populace.
Of course Dr. James Martin Jr. thinks this is a good idea. The group he represents stands to make a lot of money providing all the free healthcare this new report recommends. The lobbyists for American Acadamy of Family Physicians, with which I am intimately familiar, do the same thing for its members (after ensuring that the jobs of its governing bureaucrats are secured, of course). I'm sure the other specialty organizations do the same thing. It all adds up to very expensive free healthcare.
Mona, you penned in 2009 that ObamaCare was "ballgame." Well, here we are. You can't be SHOCKED at this now, so me thinks you're just filling column inches.
So they want women to get mandatory maternity leave, but they want them to get free breast pump rentals so they don't have to take the (undoubtedly paid) leave...
Debt ceiling mess, Obamacare mess, one mess after another.
Solve the problems in November 2012. Sadly for America, like many have already said, they can't be fixed with Obama in the WH. Repeal Obamacare before is to late, pass a balanced budget amendment, Republicans need to run on that and do it.
“we will release the Department’s recommendations of what additional preventive services for women should be covered without cost sharing very soon.”
Is there a medical treatment for stupidity? As a long-suffering US taxpayer, I would be happy to fund it. It seems that if we could just find a cure for idiocy in Washington, we could solve many other problems.
Before we get government health care, we should try out government shoes. Let the government decide what sizes, styles, and permitted costs are for shoes. Don't let anyone privately contract for shoes. Don't let shoes be imported. Require all government employees to wear the government required and provided shoes. After that, consider going on to other industries. Require old shoes be turned in. Put out a bounty for shoe hoarders.
If government can efficiently provide shoes, I will be surprised, but at least have some idea how well the more complex health care market will work.
Of course it should all be free, and, under my plan, it will be! Here's my fair plan for free healthcare:
Nationalize all healthcare workers! All doctors, nurses, pharmacists and lab techs would be declared state property. They would live in communal housing near hospitals, and be fed an 1800 calorie/day diet at public expense. They would be permitted recreation periods on alternate weekends. At age 65, they would be permitted to work half time, and then, at age 67, they would be painlessly euthanized! Tune in next time for my exciting new plan for free food for everybody!!
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