Posted on 07/29/2013 12:39:26 PM PDT by Morgana
When Congress debated Obamacare, pro-life advocates and Republicans like Sarah Palin were castigated for claiming the government-run health care program would include death panels that would ration health care treatment.
Now, former presidential candidate Howard Dean has essentially admitted they were right and is calling for the repeal of the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB). In a Wall Street Journal op-ed Monday he called the IPAB “essentially a health-care rationing body” that he believes will fail.
“There does have to be control of costs in our health-care system. However, rate setting — the essential mechanism of the IPAB — has a 40-year track record of failure,” Dean wrote.
Dean, who is a healthcare industry representative as a senior adviser at the law and lobbying firm McKenna Long & Aldridge, said his experience as governor of Vermont turned him off to government control of healthcare prices.
“What ends up happening in these schemes (which many states including my home state of Vermont have implemented with virtually no long-term effect on costs) is that patients and physicians get aggravated because bureaucrats in either the private or public sector are making medical decisions without knowing the patients,” Dean wrote.
“By setting doctor reimbursement rates for Medicare and determining which procedures and drugs will be covered and at what price, the IPAB will be able to stop certain treatments its members do not favor by simply setting rates to levels where no doctor or hospital will perform them,” Dean added. “Most important, once again, these kinds of schemes do not control costs. The medical system simply becomes more bureaucratic.”
There does have to be control of costs in our health-care system, Mr. Dean writes, but rate setting “has a 40-year track record of failure.”
More on Dean’s article:
Dean writes that in order to have a secure future, the country has to move away from fee-for-service medicine, “which is all about incentives to spend more, and has no incentives in the system to keep patients healthy. The IPAB has no possibility of helping to solve this major problem and will almost certainly make the system more bureaucratic and therefore drive up administrative costs.”
CLICK LIKE IF YOU’RE PRO-LIFE!
The IPAB was labeled a “death panel” by Republicans in the run-up to the 2010 midterm elections; among its most prominent critics was former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.
On the campaign trail last year, Rep. Paul Ryan, the GOP’s vice presidential nominee, said that with the board, Mr. Obama “puts a board of 15 unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats in charge of Medicare, who are required to cut Medicare in ways that will lead to denied care for current seniors.”
PolitiFact rated the claim “mostly false,” but Mr. Dean has provided some high-profile bipartisan opposition to the board.
“The IPAB will cause frustration to providers and patients alike, and it will fail to control costs,” Mr. Dean wrote. “When, and if, the atmosphere on Capitol Hill improves and leadership becomes interested again in addressing real problems instead of posturing, getting rid of the IPAB is something Democrats and Republicans ought to agree on.”
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Although I’m not seeing it mentioned here Howard Dean is a doctor. Unlike Jill Biden, Ph. D., it seems he doesn’t insist on being called Dr. Which is good, but it might be appropriate to mention it here.
Well, he may be wrong on everything else, but he sure is right about the death panels.
And he’s one of the rare democrat examples of media destruction as that whole “yeaaaaaargh” thing was blown way out of proportion. I guess the establishment thought he was doing too good, so he had to be destroyed.
Bo Deddle(sp) was on the radio this morning and mentioned that one of his relatives recently had a heart problem. He was told that it will be 3 months before he can be scheduled for the necessary test to determine further treatment
Remember when that lady asked obama about her elderly mom?
It’s worth noting that he didn’t tell her that her mom should get a pain reliever, he didn’t tell her she should take a pain pill.
He told he she needed a pain KILLER...
She has a D.Ed.Jill does not have Ph.D.
Based on my experience, a strongly and clearly written letter to Senators Boxer and Feinstein against a piece of statist promoting legislation will earn a response letter thanking you for your support of said legislation.
A distinction without a difference.
The panels HAVE TO EXIST in any socialist healthcare system.
Someone has to determine who gets treatment and who doesn’t.
That can be the patient & doctor, the insurance company, or some panel of gov’t bureaucrats.
I have a hard time listening to someone whose sitting in a chair and his feet don’t touch the floor.
Kudos for your attempt anyway (I understand what your are working against)!
Sign the petition:
http://www.dontfundobamacare.com
(PS I’ve actually had a very different response than yours. Though it was several years ago, it demonstrated that one letter CAN make a positive difference.)
WELL, THAT SETTLES THA...
Hold it, PolitiFact!?
Superficially clever but ignorant.
The Independent Payment Advisory Board goes beyond mere rate setting, but will prescribe what treatments doctors may give or not give patients based on “government studies”. These “government studies” claim that annual mammograms for women over 50 are “not cost effective” despite recommendations by cancer treatment experts. The little girl who would have been denied a lung transplant merely because of her age is another example of how these death panels will work.
Done
The panels are unavoidable if the government is paying the bill. Otherwise a doctor would just take an xray of you and charge the government 1 trillion dollars for it.
The free market and the free market alone works to contain costs, government ALWAYS fails.
The list, Ping
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So to the democRATs/progressives/Marxists/liberals (sorry for the redundancy), that got this abortion passed, ESAD.
Now back to your regular programming...
Shout out to the NSA: go reproduce asexually.
5.56mm
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