Story from the Wall Street Journal. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

Take a provision in the Baucus bill that would punish any physician whose “resource use” is considered too high. Beginning in 2015, Medicare would rank doctors against their peers based on how much they cost the program—and then automatically cut all payments by 5% to anyone who falls into the 90th percentile or above. In practice, this rule will only apply to specialists.

[…]In Medicare, meanwhile, the Administration is using regulation to change how doctors are paid to benefit general practitioners, internists and family physicians. In next year’s fee schedule, they’ll see higher payments on the order of 6% to 8%.

[…]this boost for GPs comes at the expense of certain specialties. The 2010 rules, which will be finalized next month, visit an 11% overall cut on cardiology and 19% on radiation oncology. They’re targets only because of cost: Two-thirds of morbidity or mortality among Medicare patients owes to cancer or heart disease.

[…]The basic tools of heart specialists—echocardiograms (stress tests) and catheterizations—are slashed by 42% and 24%, respectively.

[…]Cancer doctors get hit because the Administration believes specialists order too many MRIs and CT scans. Certain kinds of diagnostic imaging lose 24% under new assumptions that machines are in use 90% of the time, up from 50%. There isn’t a radiologist in America running an MRI 10.8 hours out of 12, unless he’s lining up patients on a conveyor belt. But claiming scanners are used far more often than they really are lets the Administration “score” spending cuts.

And this change is applied to all expensive equipment, not just MRIs and CTs, so payments for antitumor radiation therapy will fall by up to 44%.

This will primarily affect the middle-aged and the elderly.

The case of Ontario, Canada

Here’s how it works in Ontario, Canada according the the National Post. (H/T Secondhand Smoke via ECM)

Excerpt:

Opponents of the public option maintain that Canadian-style health care would entail rationing, caps on care, bureaucratic interference in medical decision-making and even “death panels” deciding when the ill become too expensive to save. Most Canadians believe this is a gross exaggeration of reality. But then how to characterize Ontario’s decision to cut off funding for colorectal cancer patients taking a life-prolonging drug, in order to save $9-million a year?

[…]Ontario Health Minister David Caplan rejected the suggestion that the cap on treatment was a financial decision alone, arguing it was based on clinical evidence. But it’s easy to reach the conclusion that the province decided nine extra months of life for a dying patient wasn’t worth the money. Which is pretty much the kind of decision a “death panel” would be confronted with.

There are ways to reduce the costs of health care while retaining freedom of choice in a capitalist system. Health care is so highly-regulated already that we are not even trying a fully capitalist system, like the one in Switzerland that I wrote about earlier.

Further study

Learn more about health care policy from my previous posts on health care:

• Paul Krugman says that public option will lead to single-payer
• Sarah Palin on tort reform and health care cost reduction
• How Democrats are handling dissent from their health care plan
• Left-wing extremist on MSNBC says that some opponents of socialism are racists
• How Obamacare turns American taxpayers into children
• Are coerced abortions and euthanasia part of Obama’s health care plan?
• Understanding Obama’s health care reform bill… with video clips!
• Paul Ryan and Ann Coulter make the case against Obamacare
• Understand the right way to reform health care… with short podcasts!
• Five freedoms you will lost if Obamacare passes
• Marsha Blackburn explains how Tennessee’s public option plan failed
• Bobby Jindal explains a dozen freedom-preserving ways to cut health care costs
• John Stossel vs Michael Moore in 20/20 health care documentary
• Obamacare will provide health care to illegal immigrants
• Study shows 83 million people will lose private insurance under Obamacare
• Jim Demint destroys Obama’s health care plan on the Senate floor
• Michele Bachmann explains the effect of Obamacare on small businesses
• Keith Hennessey and Howard “Mad How” Dean debate Obamacare