In Medicine, the Power of No - Read Between the Lines

This comes from the New York Times In Medicine, the Power of No. How can we learn to say no? The federal government is now starting to build the institutions that will try to reduce the soaring growth of health-care costs. There will be a group to compare the effectiveness of different treatments, a so called Medicare innovation center and a Medicare oversight board that can set payment rates.

You can read the whole article on NY times. Even though I am resisting to tell, I told you so, this was discussed before, wasn't it?

http://myrandomviews.blogspot.com/2009/10/us-faces-h1n1-flu-vaccine-shortage.html
http://myrandomviews.blogspot.com/2008/08/truth-about-socialized-medicine.html

They are not telling out front, they are main stream media, they can't tell you that, can they? so they are putting nice scientific twist to the fact that rationing is coming under Obamacare...

Best way to tell lie is to show you numbers / statistics / provide research reference...

they are telling you, there is Power in telling No... they are telling you:

• On a personal level, anyone who has made a decision about his or her own care knows the nagging worry that comes from not choosing the most aggressive treatment.
• Consider that a recent study found that 15,000 people were projected to die eventually from the radiation they received from CT scans given in just a single year — and that there was “significant overuse” of such scans.
• From an economic perspective, health reform will fail if we can’t sometimes push back against the try-anything instinct.
• We want the best possible care, no matter what. Yet we often do not get it because the current system tends to deliver more care even when it means worse care.
• Advocates for less intensive medicine have been too timid about all this. They often come across as bean counters, while the try-anything crowd occupies the moral high ground.
• The reality, though, is that unnecessary care causes a lot of pain and even death.

Learning to say no more often will be a three-step process, and if the new agencies created by the health act are run well, they can help with all three.

• The first is learning more about when treatments work and when they don’t. “All too often,” the Institute of Medicine reports, the data is “incomplete or unavailable.” As a result, more than half of treatments lack clear evidence of effectiveness, the institute found.
• When patients are given information about potential benefits and risks, they seem to choose less invasive care, on average, than doctors do, according to early studies.
• The tax subsidies for health insurance will shrink, which should help people realize medical care is not free. And doctors who provide good, less expensive care won’t be financially punished as often as they now are.

So in his own word: “In the United States, I don’t know that we’re ever going to get to a point where we limit health care spending, But maybe we could get patients to the same place on their own.” - Dr. Vidal says.

We can just nudge them to where we want them. population is stupid and by nudging them we can reduce the cost of health-care - without this reform will fail...

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet
A shit by any other name would stink as bad
Rationing By other Name would be rationing