Forcing Coverage
How can we make the ACA more costly? Easy. Just add move “covered services”. Here’s an example:
The Obesity Care Continuum, comprised of the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery, the Obesity Society, the Obesity Medicine Association, and the Obesity Action Coalition, has filed “a discrimination complaint” with the Department of Health and Human Services “with the goal of forcing all states to offer bariatric surgery coverage under the Affordable Care Act (ACA).” In particular, “the complaint…charges states not offering coverage for bariatric surgery with violating the provision of the ACA prohibiting the denial of coverage to people due to existing disability and with discriminating against women.” MedPage Today also points out that the American Medical Association classified obesity as a disease in 2013.
Of it goes as a discrimination complaint. Perfect. This is a slippery slope because if the complaints is successful then EVERYONE wants EVERYTHING covered and ta da, this thing becomes more of a joke than it already is.
Does the ACA cover Patient-Centered Irresponsibility Rage Syndrome? ‘Cause I definitely suffer from that.
I’m by no means a dewy-eyed fan of Ayn Rand, but you’ve got to hand it to her – when she’s seen something awful, she did a pretty good job of describing it so clearly, it could be recognized again when it reared its ugly head.
When everyone becomes a claimant to a benefit, they become servants of the Regulator, who decides whom shall receive what, and when. Of course, all things for all patients – but in the order chosen by the Regulator.
Perhaps wealth is a poor judge of who is to receive what medical services. But now, the currency is screaming – who can make the biggest scene about not getting what they really want. The currency comes in to pay the lawyers, professional screamers, who take phenomenal amounts of money so that “justice is served.”
And the old struggles about wealth are cast anew. The obese man who cannot afford BOTH a Mercedes and a gastric sleeving operation, now can. He pays for one with dollars, and the next with pleading and begging and howling. Justice! Injustice! my Congressman/woman!
The slow, the poor – or even worse, the mature, the polite, the fair – are cast aside, like the small baby birds who cannot scream as loudly for the worm. In a generation or two, our currency becomes our ability to scream when we want something.
This is why it’s too late for American medicine. It’s entrenched in the system of Regulatory Fairness. The price structure has been driven out of medicine – and a new currency is in place. Will Uncle get that bypass? Well, what purpose does Uncle serve to command the amusement or draw forth the sympathy of the Regulators? Please, no, not average guys.
Most of the American people were willing to have the blinders drawn over them and support “healthcare reform” for the last 20 years, KNOWING that it would be unjust – but confident in their ability to scream their way through the opposition. But the prosperity dwindles, and they are just Average Joes up against the “big-money screamers.”
You broke it, you bought it.
http://www.shmoop.com/atlas-shrugged/the-starnes-family.html
Sorry to rattle on, but this stuff really bugs me. The difference between a prospering society and a failing society, as Dr. Yoda put it, is the difference between “doing” and “trying.”
We can spread the dollars all over the place to address the myriad of new covered services – let’s pay for Mike/Miriam’s breasts on/breasts off gender reassignment surgery. And little Amy’s appendectomy. We can do both!
But as the British NHS discovered, who will do these things? Britain was hiring locums from the Continent who did not speak English well enough to read a standard medical chart. When little Amy’s getting a surgery from a J-1 locum who doesn’t speak English too well, nor does the anaesthesiologist nor surgical scrub team, well – at least we can say we TRIED.
The Epitaph for American Medicine may well be…. “We let nature take its course.” It certainly may be so with Amy, as we pretend that surgery is so easy, anyone with Google Glasses and a loudspeaker can call for help when they can’t tell an appendix from a preadolescent ovary. Things happen…we tried….
I’m a balding older male, I think hair replacement/growth treatments should be covered by my insurance…