Medicare's Denial of Virtual Colonoscopies

This article in the 5/26/09 addition of the New Jersey Star Ledger raises the alarm about the rationing to come.

Denying Medicare coverage for virtual colonoscopy is wrong move

My Commentary

Posted by Zemack on 05/26/09 at 8:29PM
This is an excellent article by Mr. Bramwit. The issue, though, is much wider than the relative value of virtual colonoscopies. It is about who should be making medical decisions, the government or the patient. It is about the proper role of government and the rights of the individual.

Only in the sterile mind of a bean-counting government bureaucrat can medical advances be considered too much of a cost burden on "the system". This is what happens when people give up their freedom for the illusion of "free, guaranteed" medical care. The perverse system that awards this kind of power to a hand-full of government central planners is the collectivized utopia that forces everyone to be responsible for everyone else's healthcare, but not one's own.

Medicare is following the predicted and foreseeable trajectory; exploding costs, followed by rationing, followed by an attempt to "save" the system by expanding it. The healthcare "debate" now centers on the search for new victims to loot and enslave. Whether by covert means such as the Trojan horse of a "public option", or opening up Medicare to all who want in, or by open advocacy of single payer, the drive is on to ensnare everyone under total socialized medicine, one way or the other. The logical and inevitable end result--a healthcare dictatorship.

This Medicare decision is the tip of the iceberg and a harbinger and should be a wake-up call. When we turn over our money to government, we turn over our right to make all manner of medical decisions. When the government pays, the government sets the terms. Ultimately, the central planners will have totalitarian control over who gets what treatment when, how much superficially "private" providers will be paid, and the whole field of cutting-edge medical technology and research. The victims of the cold, heavy hand of the bean counters will suffer and die in silence, even as relatively healthy people enjoy their "free" routine medical care without regard to cost.

The socialist Left loves Rowe vs. Wade on the grounds that the decision to have an abortion is a private matter between a woman and her doctor. Fair enough, and that is something I support. But the same moral and legal logic applies across the board. All medical choices are properly a private matter between the patient and his/her doctor. No one - not the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, nor some "comparative effectiveness research" board, nor any other governmental authority - has any right to interfere with or dictate that decision.

But freedom in medicine is possible only under a system of individual rights...i.e., a free market. There is no other alternative. Only by taking personal responsibility for one's own healthcare, with one's own money, can one exercise his inalienable individual right to make one's own medical decisions. Never mind the absurd contention that the average person couldn't afford to pay for his own health insurance or healthcare. America currently spends some $7500 per capita per year ($30,000 per family of four and rising) on healthcare. Almost that entire amount represents third parties spending other people's money. This is a fundamental part of the problem. Where does all of that money come from? That money comes from all of us in a myriad of ways, yet leaves us with little control over how it is spent.

Real healthcare reform starts with a re-examination of the entire network of government intrusions into the medical field that have been built up over a period of decades; from government entitlement programs, to private market insurance mandates, to the tax-distortion spawned third-party-payer system, and on and on.

As far as this Medicare decision goes, Mr. Bramwit is right to raise the alarm. Unfortunately, he shies away from the obvious solution to this horrendous decision. Rather than spread the unsustainable Medicare cancer with its $38 trillion unfunded liability to the entire country, it's time to challenge that sacred cow. Medicare should be phased out and abolished as a fundamental part of any healthcare reform.

For more on the decision by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to deny coverage for virtual colonoscopies, see The Wall Street Journal article, How Washington Rations.