Tough luck, says a front-page commentary in BioCentury. Tough luck getting cutting-edge treatment if you don’t have “the power.”
BioCentury writes:
“In healthcare as in all else, the ability to make important decisions — especially about other people — is at its heart all about power: who has it, how those who have it use it to shape their vision of society, and the effect of those actions on individuals.”
Case-in-point – what happens when the whole becomes more important than the parts therein?
“Two clinical practice recommendations last week — one in the U.K. and one in the U.S. — illustrate the worst of what centralized healthcare can be. Both are based on a vision of society — explicit in the U.K. but still implicit in the U.S. healthcare debate — in which the whole trumps the individual. And both would condemn thousands of patients to death on the grounds that saving their lives is not worth the cost to society as a whole.”
It’s what happens when cost trumps care.
“This kind of gap between benefit to the individual and cost to society will only get worse as more power is centralized in the hands of one or a few payers, and as taxpayer subsidies enable patients to contribute even less to the direct cost of their own care.”
Except, that is, if you’ve got “the power,” a voice, clout.
On Thursday, Senator Barbara Mikulski announced she would introduce an amendment to the Senate healthcare reform bill that “would guarantee women access to mammograms beginning at age 40, and prevent insurance companies from making them unaffordable.”
So much for unbiased, non-political, science-based decisions. It’s about power not about patients.
“Fighting for such patchwork fixes is already the norm in the U.K. and likely to become so in the U.S.: government reviewers will recommend for or against medical interventions based on the cost-benefit to society as a whole, patients and doctors will object, and if their political clout is sufficient, a fix will be made.”
And, the BioCentury commentary concludes:
“Avoiding this quagmire can only be done by going back to the original question — who has power and how is it used — and shifting the answer from government-backed bodies to the patient.”
The complete BioCentury commentary can be found here.
“Ultimately, the only power to which man should aspire is that which he exercises over himself.”
-- Elie Wiesel
BioCentury writes:
“In healthcare as in all else, the ability to make important decisions — especially about other people — is at its heart all about power: who has it, how those who have it use it to shape their vision of society, and the effect of those actions on individuals.”
Case-in-point – what happens when the whole becomes more important than the parts therein?
“Two clinical practice recommendations last week — one in the U.K. and one in the U.S. — illustrate the worst of what centralized healthcare can be. Both are based on a vision of society — explicit in the U.K. but still implicit in the U.S. healthcare debate — in which the whole trumps the individual. And both would condemn thousands of patients to death on the grounds that saving their lives is not worth the cost to society as a whole.”
It’s what happens when cost trumps care.
“This kind of gap between benefit to the individual and cost to society will only get worse as more power is centralized in the hands of one or a few payers, and as taxpayer subsidies enable patients to contribute even less to the direct cost of their own care.”
Except, that is, if you’ve got “the power,” a voice, clout.
On Thursday, Senator Barbara Mikulski announced she would introduce an amendment to the Senate healthcare reform bill that “would guarantee women access to mammograms beginning at age 40, and prevent insurance companies from making them unaffordable.”
So much for unbiased, non-political, science-based decisions. It’s about power not about patients.
“Fighting for such patchwork fixes is already the norm in the U.K. and likely to become so in the U.S.: government reviewers will recommend for or against medical interventions based on the cost-benefit to society as a whole, patients and doctors will object, and if their political clout is sufficient, a fix will be made.”
And, the BioCentury commentary concludes:
“Avoiding this quagmire can only be done by going back to the original question — who has power and how is it used — and shifting the answer from government-backed bodies to the patient.”
The complete BioCentury commentary can be found here.
“Ultimately, the only power to which man should aspire is that which he exercises over himself.”
-- Elie Wiesel
