Institute of Medicine Provides 'Medical' Cover for Sebelius

There is a lot of talk, during these pre-presidential election days, of whether Republicans should stick to fiscal policy issues or include social issues as well in their platforms. Liberals are attacking fiscal/social conservatives, and some “establishment” Republicans are also criticizing their socially conservative colleagues, fearful that Independents will be turned off by the thought that Republicans are appearing rigid, strict, and hard.

Political strategy aside, however, what often strikes me about these debates, which always seem centered on how conservative Republicans are trying to force their social views on the nation, is that liberals do it all the time and are successful at it. Their belief that the government should take care of everyone, from birth till death, has permeated our national policies and slowly destroyed our economic stability.

Nowhere, in this most liberal of all administrations, is the forcing of liberal social ideology on the nation more clearly visible than in Obamacare, and in the person of Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), who will be the most powerful woman in the United States if Barack Obama is re-elected in 2012.

As many of us heard earlier in the month, the Obama administration has approved a recommendation from the Institute of Medicine that the new healthcare law guarantee full health insurance coverage for birth control, including the “morning after” pill. Beginning August 1, 2012, health insurance plans will be required to provide full coverage- without co-payment, co-insurance, or deductible- not only for contraception, but also for breast-feeding support and other services. Ms. Sebelius said, “I want to thank the Institute of Medicine for providing this important report recommending additional preventive services for women’s health and well-being. This report is historic.”

According to Ms. Sebelius:

“The Affordable Care Act helps stop health problems before they start…These historic guidelines are based on science and existing literature and will help ensure women get the preventive health benefits they need.”

The Institute of Medicine (IOM) describes itself as “an independent, nonprofit organization that works outside of government to provide unbiased and authoritative advice to decision makers and the public.” The IOM states that its mission is to serve as “adviser to the nation to improve health.” Apparently, it focuses on much more than just health.

The IOM’s recommendations for full health insurance coverage for birth control are contained in its report, Clinical Preventive Service for Women, in which the IOM states that it was “charged” by the DHHS to review “what preventive services are important to women’s health and well-being and then recommending which of these should be considered in the development of comprehensive guidelines.”

The IOM’s response: just about all services should be covered by Obamacare, including a “fuller range of contraceptive education, counseling, methods, and services, services for pregnant women…and screening and counseling for interpersonal and domestic violence.”

Below is a list of some of the IOM’s other, most recent, reports:

• Legal Strategies in Childhood Obesity Prevention, in which the IOM answers the question, “Could legal restrictions and regulations help combat childhood obesity?”

IOM’s answer is: more regulation.

• Medical Devices and the Public’s Health: The FDA 510(k) Clearance Process at 35 Years, a study which was requested by the FDA, an agency of DHHS, in which the conclusion drawn is that “FDA’s finite resources should be invested in developing an integrated premarket and postmarket regulatory framework.”

IOM’s conclusion is: more funding for more regulation.

• Learning What Works: Infrastructure Required for Comparative Effectiveness Research, in which the IOM bemoans the fact that “only a small fraction of health-related expenditures in the U.S. have been devoted to comparative effectiveness research,” and hopes that, with more funding, the nation’s healthcare system will be more “evidenced-based” and of “higher value.”

This will be a report that the president’s Medicare Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) will likely use as their bible to determine whether spending more money on the elderly’s healthcare is based on sound “evidence” that the money will be well spent, and of a high enough “value” for the rest of society. Here again: more funding for more regulation.

• A Nationwide Framework for Surveillance of Cardiovascular and Chronic Lung Diseases, in which the IOM calls upon DHHS to adopt its recommended national surveillance system.

More mandatory regulation for research.

• Improving Access to Oral Health Care for Vulnerable and Underserved Populations, in which the IOM states it was “asked” by the Health Resources Services Administration and the California HealthCare Foundation to assess the current oral health care system and make “recommendations on ways to improve access to care for vulnerable and underserved populations.” The IOM’s recommendations: “incorporate oral health care into overall health care…and change how oral health care is financed and delivered.”

IOM’s answer is: more federal regulation so that oral healthcare is fully covered in the national insurance program.

The “independent” Institute of Medicine does not appear to be quite so “independent” after all. When we read the list of reports prepared by the IOM, it seems that many, if not most, of its “recommendations” have been incorporated into Obamacare, or set up as “guidelines” that become requirements for private health insurance providers. We might logically conclude from this relationship between IOM and the Obama administration that its directors will also be members of the “independent” IPAB and other such “panels.”

In fact, following the IOM’s recommendations on full birth control coverage and “other” preventive services for women, one member of the IOM panel, Dr. Anthony Lo Sosso of the University of Illinois, dissented to these very recommendations. Dr. Lo Sasso stated that IOM generated recommendations without engaging in sufficient time to fully review all the evidence before it, and that the decisions made by IOM were made based on politics, rather than science:

“The view of this dissent is that the committee process for evaluation of the evidence lacked transparency and was largely subject to the preferences of the committee’s composition. Troublingly, the process tended to result in a mix of objective and subjective determinations filtered through a lens of advocacy.”

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With this self-professed “independent” research institute at her side, providing her with “medical” and “science” coverage, Kathleen Sebelius is fast on her way to becoming the most powerful woman in the nation, a realization that should urge members of Congress, the peoples’ representatives, to do everything possible to repeal and replace Obamacare before the legislation cannot be undone. A run of interference by the Supreme Court to declare the individual mandate “unconstitutional” is only an assist for the real operation- which Congress must perform- to cure us of this onerous legislation that will do to our healthcare system what has already been done to our economy.