STATE OF THEUNION REACTION: Even “Scaled Back” Health Bill May Ration Care (Burke Balch resides in DC)

STATE OF THEUNION REACTION: Even “Scaled Back” Health Bill May Ration Care (Burke Balch resides in DC)

Despite the end of a filibuster-proof Senate with the victory of Senator-Elect Scott Brown, President Obama’s State of the Union address to Congress is expected to push for passage of health care legislation. Even if in a “scaled back,” version, it is clear that the President will push for the inclusion of strong cost-containment measures to limit continuing growth in health care spending. Imposing cost-containment on private sector health care spending is both unnecessary and will force rationing, claims attorney Burke Balch, director of National Right to Life Committee’s Powell Center for Medical Ethics and featured speaker of the DVD Special, “Healthcare from a Pro-life Perspective,” available at: www.CleanTV.com .

Conducting Talk Show interviews rebutting the President on this vital topic, Balch challenges the conventional wisdom. He says that Obama’s assumption it is necessary to “bend the cost curve” because America cannot afford to continue to increase health care spending in the future as it has in the past is fundamentally flawed. Ironically, among the economists who have debunked this fallacy is the Obama Administration’s nominee for Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation in the Department of Health and Human Services, Columbia University health care economist Sherry Glied, who did so in her 1997 book “Chronic Condition: Why Health Reform Fails.”

Burke shares the facts with your audience: The percent of the average family budget devoted to health care (including what employers pay for employees’ health insurance) has steadily grown from 3% in 1940 to 17% in 2006. But as Glied’s book demonstrates, the trend must be seen in context. During that same period, the percent of the average family budget devoted to food declined from almost 30% to under 15%, because of ever-increasing improvements in agricultural productivity. Indeed, the percent of the average family budget devoted to the three essentials of food, clothing, and shelter fell from about 53% to about 33%. Consequently, the percent of its budget the average family spent for health care plus food, clothing, and shelter actually dropped from 56% in 1940 to 50% in 2006. As long as our free market economy continues to increase productivity, there is no reason why this trend can’t continue.

Balch says its one thing to increase efficiency by fostering greater competition among insurers and providers. But when government bureaucrats are empowered to limit what private citizens are allowed to spend for their health insurance, holding it below the rate of medical inflation – as under the bill passed by the Senate – the result is to force less treatment and poorer diagnoses – the kind of rationing seen in Canada and Great Britain.

Burke Balch has been carefully following the ins and outs of the multiple-thousand-page health care restructuring bills, and is an expert on how they would ration lifesaving medical care.

“We are seeing more and more evidence that common sense is right – you can’t get more for less,” Burke Balch says. “You can’t force Americans to spend less than they want to on health care, as the Senate and House bills would do, and expect that with less treatment the same number of people will survive life-threatening illnesses and injuries. Obamacare is a prescription for rationing the American people can’t afford.”

NOTE: Talk Show hosts are requested to mention that the DVD Special, “Healthcare for a Pro-life Perspective,” is available at: www.CleanTV.com for a download fee of 99 cents. Thank you.

THE FOLLOWING WEBSITE PAGES MAY BE HELPFUL DURING SHOW PREP:

www.nrlc.org/MedEthics/AmericaCanAfford.html

www.nrlc.org/HealthCareRationing/Index.html


ABOUT BURKE BALCH:

Burke J. Balch, J.D. currently serves as the Director of the Robert Powell Center for Medical Ethics, associated with the National Right to Life Committee, specializing in euthanasia-related issues.

Prior to this Burke worked for the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights as Attorney-Advisor, helping to create a report on the topic of denial of life-saving medical treatment to children with disabilities ("Baby Doe" cases).

Mr. Balch has also served as Chief Staff Counsel for the National Legal Center for the Medically Dependent and Disabled.

To schedule an interview with BURKE BALCH, call: 630-848-0750.