Fearmongering Health Care Ad Comparing American Reform To Britain And Canada
Conservatives For Patients rights, the Swift Boat Health Smear Group headed by disgraced health executive Rick Scott, has released a new ad, and POLITICO, in turn, has penned another blog post presenting the advertisement.
In what can best be described as a marriage of Betsy McCaughey (the government intends to control what’s in your medicine cabinet!) and Sally Pipes (Canadian health care is coming!), the ad warns that the Federal Coordinating Council For Comparative Effectiveness Research was modeled “after the national board that controls Britain’s health system” to institute “government control over your health care choices.” Two doctors testify to the horrors of medicine in Great Britain and Canada, respectively:
SCOTT: “Deep inside the stimulus bill, Congress buried an innocent sounding board: the Federal Coordinating Council For Comparative Effectiveness Research. It’s not so innocent – it’s the first step in government control over your health care choices. This federal council is modeled after the national board that control’s Britain’s health system. Listen to Britain’s Dr. Karol Sikora about what happens to patients once the government takes over.”
DR. SIKORA (GB): “They’ll lose their own choice, completely…lose control of their own destiny within the medical system.” [...]
DR. DAY (Canada) “Patients are languishing and suffering on wait lists, our own Supreme Court of Canada has stated that patients are actually dying as they wait for care…
Scared yet? Well, you shouldn’t be. As Media Matters Action Network explains here, and I’ve written here, here, and here, comparative effectiveness research will ensure that doctors and patients have access to information about treatment effectiveness without the filter of a drug industry representative. As Newt Gingrich explains, “today, only about 10 percent of all health care is based on evidence. That means that 90 percent of the care we receive is, basically, informed opinion. We need a rigorous, clear system to measure the costs, benefits and value of a given procedure, technology or drug.”
Most notably, Obama has rejected a British/Canadian-like single-payer reform and most policy makers are looking for a “uniquely American solution” that preserves the employer-sponsored system and creates a hybrid public-private partnership. In other words, American reforms would look a bit like the Swiss health system in which the government “leaves the provision of health care and health insurance in private hands” but creates a marketplace within which insurers can compete on price, and not avoid insuring the sickest patients.
