Obamacare's Brave New World

With the FDA preparing to initiate cost-based rationing of late stage cancer drugs, the intellectual giants at the New York Times have decided to lay down a gauntlet to defend rationing of medical care. Welcome to the Brave New World of ObamaCare.

To the Times, it is an outrage that drugs are approved with “no consideration of cost,” begging the question, which bureaucrat will determine what is the value of life? We have already seen evidence that $8,000 for an average six months of more life for breast cancer patients is too much for some bureaucrats to bear.

The opinion writers at the Times show sympathy for the sick by suggesting in that they don’t want to “bar patients from getting the treatment they need. But without curtailing the use of unnecessary, overly costly and even dangerous new technologies and surgical procedures, there is little hope of restraining the relentless rise in health care costs. That is a truth that American politicians and taxpayers cannot afford to ignore for much longer.”

There you have it. In one subjective packed paragraph, the proponents of rationing within the administration have called in air support from the New York Times.

Voters will not forget that Ezekiel Emanuel, the brother to the president’s chief of staff and a presidential appointee has written extensively, as Betsy McCaughey reminded us, about who should get medical care, who should decide, and whose life is worth saving. Dr. Emanuel is part of a school of thought that redefines a physician’s duty, insisting that it includes working for the greater good of society instead of focusing only on a patient’s needs.

But Emanuel is not alone in advocating denial of care from within the executive branch of government. The president’s own Medicare appointee has Dr. Donald Berwick long been an advocate for a single-payer system. While speaking in England in 2008, he praised the British system and said “Any health care funding plan that is just, equitable, civilized and humane, must redistribute wealth from the richer among us to the poorer and the less fortunate. Excellent health care is by definition redistributional.” Unfortunately for the sick, this often means redistribution of health from the sick to the healthy.

With the public clearly rejecting ObamaCare and its rationing mechanisms, the Times laments that supporters of “reform” curtailed the ability of bureaucrats to limit new drugs based on cost factors. Or did they?

With the FDA preparing to limit access of a critical late stage cancer drug for breast cancer patients as early as this week, observers note that quickly the FDA can become our health care system’s judge and executioner.

Americans should never be denied treatment because a bureaucrat determines a treatment, procedure or drug is too expensive. But that is where we are heading. Can Americans, this November, take the country back from those who want government and not doctors to make these life or death decisions?