We know health care rationing is coming. We’ve had plenty of warnings.

Some, like Bob Moffitt and others at the Heritage Foundation, have provided plenty of detailed
information about the architects and blueprints for it, under the
‘reform’ umbrella. They have well-reasoned suggestions and thorough
plans for health care reform that wouldn’t force private insurers out,
wouldn’t set up a federal board some call the ‘Supreme Court of Health’
to determine who is or isn’t worthy of resources, and wouldn’t remove
physicians’ conscience protections. And they’re working hard on Capitol
Hill to convince Congress of the merits of those plans, versus the
Obama administration’s blueprint.

Others, like Charles Krauthammer, have also calculated how this administration is going to roll out health care rationing by cost analysis. Same conclusions….

What is obviously required is entitlement reform, meaning Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid. That’s where the real money is.

Except that Obama has offered no real entitlement reform. His
universal health care proposal would increase costs by perhaps $1
trillion.

Pause and let that sink in a moment. A trillion here, a trillion there.

Obama’s own budget projections show staggering budget
deficits going out to 2019. If he knows his social agenda is going to
drown us in debt, what’s he up to?

Good question. Evasive answers.

He has only hinted about “additional adjustments” in future budgets.

Krauthammer guesses what that means.

“Additional adjustments” equals major cuts in Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid.

Social Security is easy. A bipartisan commission’s proposal goes to Congress for a no-amendment up-or-down vote. Done.

The hard part is Medicare and Medicaid. In an aging population, how
do you keep them from blowing up the budget? There is only one answer:
rationing.

Tom Daschle may not be at HHS after all, but his elaborate designs are there.

Why do you think the stimulus package pours $1.1 billion into medical “comparative effectiveness research”?

As Moffitt explained, that’s what may lead to the federal health
board, the ‘Supreme Court of Health’. And he, like Krauthammer,
emphasizes how critical it is that the council for “comparative
effectiveness research” be regulated and watched closely. Because…

Once you establish what is best practice for expensive
operations, medical tests and aggressive therapies, you’ve laid the
premise for funding some and denying others.

And denying them on calculations about a patient’s ‘quality of
life’, according to some board that never saw the patient. The elderly
and the impaired will be most at risk.

It is estimated that a third to a half of one’s lifetime
health costs are consumed in the last six months of life. Accordingly,
Britain’s National Health Service can deny treatments it deems not
cost-effective - and if you’re old and infirm, the cost-effectiveness
of treating you plummets. In Canada, they ration by queuing. You can
wait forever for so-called elective procedures.

Don’t take for granted that somehow, this won’t happen.

Social Security used to be the third rail of American
politics. Not anymore. Health care rationing is taking its place -
which is why Obama, the consummate politician, knows to offer the candy
(universality) today before serving the spinach (rationing) tomorrow.