Senate Works to Repeal Rationing [Reader Post]

The ObamaCare bill was riddled with land mines all designed to implement rationing of health care treatments and procedures in order to “reduce the cost” of health care expenditures to the government. Those provisions include the establishment of “comparative effectiveness research” and the creation of the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB). Comparative effectiveness research will provide the justification for denial of care that will be carried out by the IPAB. It is critical people understand the pending threats to their health care freedom so let’s take a look at these two provisions of law.

“Comparative effectiveness research” purports to find comparative treatments that are cheaper and as effective. Sounds good on paper but things don’t always work out that way. For example, some patients react differently to the generic version of a drug than they do the named version. No one really knows why but in those instances should a doctor be forced to prescribe the generic version when it won’t work?

That is essentially what these studies do – they force decisions by the government onto the private doctor/patient relationship and they become a tool used by government-run health care systems to dictate cheaper treatment. Cost often trumps quality.

Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ) recently introduced legislation entitled The Preserving Access to Targeted, Individualized, and Effective New Treatments and Services (PATIENTS) Act of 2011. The legislation would prohibit the government from using comparative effectiveness research to deny or delay a health care treatment of a health-care treatment. The Kyl bill will leave the final decision as to what works to the doctor as opposed to a bureaucrat.

The Obama stimulus bill created funding for over $1 billion of such research and the ObamaCare bill create an institute to manage these studies. Private insurers, Medicare and Medicaid will look to the institute to make determinations over coverage.

A recent example of comparative research is the National Institutes for Health (NIH) look at whether the drug Avastin can be substituted for the drug Lucentis for patients with the eye disease age-related macular degeneration. Lucentis was approved by the FDA for treatment of macular degeneration but Avastin was not. But Avastin is much cheaper that Lucentis so the bureaucrats at NIH wanted to determine whether Avastin could be injected into the eye and have similar results as Lucentis.

Probably not. Johns Hopkins researchers found an 11 percent higher mortality risk and 57 percent higher risk of cerebral hemorrhage in patients using Avastin compared to using Lucentis. Will the government mandate that doctors use Avastin instead because it is cheaper? Time will tell.

Once the government has its justification from the research, the IPAB will deliver the final blow – making the final decision to deny care. Sens. Cornyn (R-TX), Hatch (R-UT) and others have joined together in an effort to repeal the IPAB provisions of ObamaCare noting that the Board will make determinations on health care decisions instead of doctors.

These two provisions of ObamaCare will lead to rationing in our health care system. If they whole ObamaCare bill isn’t repealed, picking it apart with the Kyl and Cornyn bills are the next best things.