http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124692973435303415.html
Do you know what the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, or NICE, in the UK is? Like the governmental committee to make ‘recommendations’ on care and best practices in Obamacare, NICE was originally set up just to advise on best practices, but mutated.
“What NICE has become in practice is a rationing board. As health costs have exploded in Britain as in most developed countries, NICE has become the heavy that reduces spending by limiting the treatments that 61 million citizens are allowed to receive through the NHS. For example:
In March, NICE ruled against the use of two drugs, Lapatinib and Sutent, that prolong the life of those with certain forms of breast and stomach cancer. This followed on a 2008 ruling against drugs — including Sutent, which costs about $50,000 — that would help terminally ill kidney-cancer patients. After last year’s ruling, Peter Littlejohns, NICE’s clinical and public health director, noted that “there is a limited pot of money,” that the drugs were of “marginal benefit at quite often an extreme cost,” and the money might be better spent elsewhere.
In 2007, the board restricted access to two drugs for macular degeneration, a cause of blindness. The drug Macugen was blocked outright. The other, Lucentis, was limited to a particular category of individuals with the disease, restricting it to about one in five sufferers. Even then, the drug was only approved for use in one eye, meaning those lucky enough to get it would still go blind in the other. As Andrew Dillon, the chief executive of NICE, explained at the time: “When treatments are very expensive, we have to use them where they give the most benefit to patients.”
NICE has limited the use of Alzheimer’s drugs, including Aricept, for patients in the early stages of the disease. Doctors in the U.K. argued vociferously that the most effective way to slow the progress of the disease is to give drugs at the first sign of dementia. NICE ruled the drugs were not “cost effective” in early stages.
Other NICE rulings include the rejection of Kineret, a drug for rheumatoid arthritis; Avonex, which reduces the relapse rate in patients with multiple sclerosis; and lenalidomide, which fights multiple myeloma. Private U.S. insurers often cover all, or at least portions, of the cost of many of these NICE-denied drugs.
NICE has also produced guidance that restrains certain surgical operations and treatments. NICE has restrictions on fertility treatments, as well as on procedures for back pain, including surgeries and steroid injections. The U.K. has recently been absorbed by the cases of several young women who developed cervical cancer after being denied pap smears by a related health authority, the Cervical Screening Programme, which in order to reduce government health-care spending has refused the screens to women under age 25.
Sound good to you?
Doesn’t sound good to me.
Sunshine he said 2/3 not 1/3 and since he is ADDING huge committee and oversight structures and keeping insurance involved as well, there is no savings. That is the problem the CBO had with it. It doesn’t cut costs. So to take the money from medicare means cutting service.
1/3 of “healthcare” costs are actually HMO administrative costs, meaning profits. Obviously, if you bypass the HMO’s driving up costs to make money off of us, you save a lot of money.
http://www.pnhp.org/news/2003/august/administrative_costs.php
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/short/349/8/768
Creative bookkeeping.
And lies.
Redefine eligibility requirements based upon ‘worthiness’; then establish Boards of Review to first define ‘worthiness’, then review the applicants’ eligibility. This will of course require regional czars, under-czars, community czars “Comm – Czars”
Sounds like crap to me DAR. Remember the universal health care issue is not about truly helping people. It’s about trying to hold on to the power and control a certain party has over way too much. And has had for decades. Limit their deceit and things will really begin to change.
Why exactly do so many canadians come to the US for health care? What’s next(if this does pass), they gonna cry because it takes too long for them to see somebody? Want, want, want…..Take, take and take. Might as well just change one of our mottos from the land of the free to the land of the spoiled a55ed rotten.
Nice rant.
Thank you for a well thought out and informative question. Sad that they could not sue them because of this, but that’s one of the perks of being the goverrnment.
This must be another way to allow the insurance companies to dump the high cost customers, just like they were able to do with the high costs of prescription drugs.
Amazing that Chris Dodd is for it as he has only gotten about $5 million from banking and insurance companies. They know that places like the three county area around Dade county has almost a billion bill annually for aids.
These high costs are costing the top brass of the insurance companies money and bonuses. Since Obama has taken office Fed spending has gone up 25% from 3 to 4 trillion, even without the cap and trade and 3 billion for this health plan.
let’s use the KISS system to answer your question there is no way to do what they say and understand it is the same as a campaign promise.It is not possible. Even the President stated the government run programs were bankrupting the country, so why push this other than a payoff from and for insurance.
Pray that the Congress understands that the 30 million undocumtneted ( using that government figure and not the 12 million figure during the last try), then take the 12 million that don’t want to pay, the homeless that have mental problems and still can get medicaid and you have maybe 10 million that fall in the cracks that want it, but cannot afford it and that’s that.
I notice and have contacted the companies that will take anyone and only for $160 amonth and do not understand why the government would not farm out Medicare to them.
As far as the cancer, MD Anderson has done extensive studies and also China and Japan, UCLA, Wake Forrest… that resveratrol, stops cancer (google ” clinical and preclinicasl trials of resveratrol for cancer”) and many have been saved, but for some reason the government will not advertise it. Many doctors even prescribe it after breast cancer therapy. I have a freind that was given 3 months and that was four years ago now.
You know this, but the “plan” is a government take over to reward the lobbyists and will kill 100,000s more than Raplh Nadar has documented.
Didn’t mean to ramble, and much better answers, but hope this may help. Have a great 2009, 2010…..