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Politics : A US National Health Care System?
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To: i-node who wrote (6370)3/14/2009 9:17:33 AM
From: Lane3  Read Replies (1) of 42652
 
If the ratio of the cost to expected benefit was insufficient, the treatment would not be allowed.

I trust that by "allowed" you mean that the insurer would pay, not that that doctor and patient would be permitted to proceed with the treatment. Denying payment and denying treatment are two very different things.

In that arrangement, a "board" or "czar" would determine the relative value in treating a patient based on the expected outcome.

I find it useful to do such calculations. It's not the cost/benefit exercise that's the problem but what you do with it. There are many patients and families of patients who want to do everything possible even when the situation is all but hopeless, for example, keeping brain dead patients alive or doing one more treatment to extend life another couple of months for someone circling the drain. I don't think insurers should have to pay for patients and their families not being realistic about or accepting death. I think it's useful to be able to present the facts to the consumer, to ask if it's really worth spending $300,000 to live three more months. Sure, we have to be sensitive around the dying, but I can't see being ridiculous about it.

I appreciate that you might consider the proposal for such a board to be a harbinger of what you fear and it may well be the start of a slippery slope. But that proposal in itself is not something to be feared, methinks, and railing against it an over-reaction.
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