What a $250 Rebate Check Will Buy in Donald Berwick’s World
The Administration is spending today touting its $250 Medicare rebate checks to seniors. While the Associated Press notes that only 1 in 10 Medicare beneficiaries will ever receive a check in the first place, it’s worth examining how far that rebate might go in allowing seniors to purchase life-saving pharmaceuticals.
This latter issue is particularly relevant because Donald Berwick, the Administration’s choice to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, is an outspoken proponent of the British system of government-imposed rationing of health care. Berwick has specifically praised Britain’s National Institute for Clinical Excellence, which denies National Health Service patients access to treatments that are too costly. He notes that “the decision is not whether or not we will ration care – the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open.” Some British examples of government-imposed rationing demonstrate what $250 will buy a patient denied care by Berwick’s system of rationing with open eyes:
- Ian Dobbin, a Yorkshire leukemia patient, was denied a cancer treatment costing £25,000 ($36,250 at current exchange rates). A $250 rebate would pay for less than 1% of the cost of this life-saving treatment.
- Ann Marie Rogers, a breast cancer patient, filed suit against the NHS seeking to fund her coverage of the life-saving drug Herceptin; a year’s treatment of the drug costs £19,500 ($28,275). A $250 rebate would pay less than half the cost of a week’s worth of Herceptin.
- Sarah Anderson, an NHS ophthalmologist, wrote an article describing “How the NHS Is Letting My Father Die,” because the British system of government-imposed rationing denied her father access to the chemotherapy drug Sutent, which costs £2,200 ($3,190) for a monthly treatment. A $250 rebate would pay less than 10% of the cost of one month’s access to Sutent.
So while Democrats may be trumpeting their $250 rebates to seniors today, the select few seniors receiving these rebate checks had better invest them wisely – because if a system of government-imposed rationing migrates from Britain to the United States, $250 won’t begin to help the seniors denied access to life-saving care under Berwick’s brave new world of “rationing with our eyes open.”