Should We Ration Healthcare?

According to Professor Singer of Princeton University the answer is "yes". In his recent letter to the New York Times, Professor Singer argues eloquently and passionately that rationing healthcare should at least be an option and tries to establish that there is a dollar value on human life. I find this appalling, and yet another piece of evidence that our national healthcare system is dysfunctional, our business leaders are out of ideas and our politicians are too beholden to vested interests.

President Obama recently declared that the current endeavor to reform healthcare is "different this time", alluding to the doomed effort Hillary Clinton made 15 years ago. It is different, or so he says, and ostensibly has a better chance of success because all of the parties are "at the table" this time: patients' advocates, "Big Pharma", labor, management, Democrats and Republicans. Unfortunately I am reminded of the old saying (attribution, anyone?) that, "A camel is a horse, designed by committee."

So what sort of a compromise can we expect from this combination of business men, lobbyists and politicians? I shudder to think. Professor Singer argues that as with all scarce national resources, we should ration our healthcare. Imagine if you can, that we imported no foreign oil. American consumers could only purchase oil and all its derivatives from American oil companies sourced from American territories. We would be forced to ration oil and would probably be paying $73 a gallon for gas.

Pretty absurd, right? Countries import what they cannot produce or provide their citizenry. We have been importing oil for decades, and our hydro carbon society would literally collapse without sources of foreign oil. Our national healthcare system may not be near collapse, but it is certainly in crisis and the call to ration healthcare is yet another sign of fatigue and submission to the ossified ways of the past.

Rather than ration our healthcare, why not embrace the "importing" of foreign healthcare alternatives by sending more American patients overseas for treatment? The trend in "medical tourism" is already well underway, and will only accelerate in the near future- thanks exclusively to the private sector. If our government got behind the idea, and allowed Medicare and Medicaid to pay for medical treatments at accredited hospitals overseas this would go a long way towards alleviating the stress on our system.

In March, Dr. Sanjay Gupta of CNN profiled a woman from Las Vegas who, rather than pay $175,000 for surgery to correct her atrial fibrillation travelled to Delhi, India where she had the procedure done (successfully) for $10,000. There are many other examples of how people are traversing borders in search of better and, or more affordable healthcare. Think of the savings to insurance companies and to tax payers.

One of the major reasons healthcare costs of surged in recent years is the gay abandon with which Americans sue for malpractice- driving up insurance premiums and in some cases causing Dr.s to move from 1 state to another. Part of the healthcare reform initiative should be to cap awards in malpractice suits and raise the standards for determining malpractice. Another reason healthcare costs have increased so dramatically? The fact that so many Americans subsist on a high trans fat diet, smoke and do little to no exercise is also a major factor .

So I echo Steve Burd's call to "gear" patients' share of their medical treatments to their behavior- since some 70% of serious illnesses and diseases are behaviour-related. In his Op-Ed piece in the Wall Street Journal on June 12 Mr. Burd, the CEO of Safeway, revealed how his company had saved a huge amount of money simply by rewarding those employees who stayed healthy or made efforts to improve their health; by quitting smoking, dieting / losing weight and doing more exercise.

Ration healthcare? No way. And unless our business leaders and politicians start to imagine more creative alternatives to cutting spending and increasing taxes? Brace yourselves for "Camel Healthcare"!