Coming: Big Brother Health Care

I've been quiet about the portions of the Porkulus package that lay the groundwork for the coming Federal Colossus of Health Care, mostly because I've been hoping that some miracle would prevent it from becoming law.

But I think we have to prepare ourselves for the worst, which means two years of fighting a rearguard action against Big Government Medicine until voters with common sense can take back Congress in 2010.

Sen. Tom Coburn is already laying the groundwork for us in his denunciations of the portions of the bill that would create a new Office of Comparative Effectiveness. Rather than bore you with my inexactitudes, here is some what he said today:

“The practice of medicine is about 40 percent art and 60 percent science. A so-called ‘comparative effectiveness’ formula will replace the professional judgment of doctors and nurses, which is developed over many years, with the political judgments of politicians and bureaucrats. A comparative effectiveness formula will only save money by rationing care and ending lives. Congress is on the verge of enacting the same policy that Great Britain has used to decide, for example, that extending a patient’s life for a year isn’t worth more than $45,000.

“Trusting the government to ration care will take away choices and life-saving treatments from sick patients and deny families more time with their loved ones. Doctors and patients should be making decisions based on individual patient conditions and needs. Allowing government to make these decisions would set us on a dangerous path. The unelected staff and career politicians who are negotiating these details have almost zero real world experience in the health care sector. Congress should confess its limited capabilities in this area and debate this issue in the open, not rush through massive policy changes in secret.”

A full text of his remarks can be found here. It is not yet on his senate website.