Is Health Care Rationing on the Horizon for Americans?

While many Americans are battling to repeal the very unpopular health care law just passed in the United States, The Wall Street Journal reports this week on another battle taking place in Great Britain related to health care rationing.  The information from The Wall Street Journal paints a grim picture of the hardships endured by the Brits thanks to their government-run health care system.  Far from great health care for all, a dismal situation emerges. Is painful health care rationing on the horizon for Americans?

In Great Britain, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (inappropriately nicknamed NICE) is the group responsible for critical decisions about what drugs and medical treatments are permissible for patients and what ones are not.  They are the bureaucrats who makes decisions that impact not only the quality of life for some patients, but who also decide in effect who will live and who will die.  Their rationing decisions are often far from NICE.  But, their goal is rationing for the purpose of saving the government money.

To illustrate, how NICE works, let’s look at pharmaceuticals.  The Wall Street Journal lists several important drugs that were nixed by the not-so-NICE group – Vidaza, a bone marrow drug; Avastin, a multi-cancer drug; and Tyverb, a drug you might need to fight breast cancer.  With decisions like these, is it any wonder that in a recent study, breast cancer survival rates in the U.S. were about 14% higher than in Britain and prostate cancer survival rates were over 40% higher?  With more medical testing and treament options in the current U.S. health care system, Americans have better health care.

Indeed, the U.S. health care system has been operating in a highly regulated, partially free market.  It has performed well.  But, it could and would perform better if fewer regulations and more competition were allowed and if health care companies were free to innovate more and bring down costs.

Back to the breast care survival rate comparison.  If America continues on the road to de facto socialized medicine, government regulations and bureacrats will likely need to ration health care drugs, treatments, and tests.  The government will laud itself on its cost-cutting efficiency.  But, if you’re a woman, or the husband of a woman, or the son or daughter of a Mother, who does not survive breast cancer due to health care rationing by government regulations, how will you feel?

Unfortunately, if the new health care law is not ruled unconstitutional or is not repealed, it looks like Americans have health care rationing on the horizon.  To get a better understanding of our future, just look to Britain and Canada.  It’s a dismal future.  It’s not the rosy scenario painted by progressive socialists.