Panel would limit access to care

Obama has proposed a new executive branch agency called Independent Medicare Advisory Council (IMAC). This agency would be an independent, non partisan body of doctors and other health experts, appointed by Obama and accountable to only him, and confirmed by the Senate. They would have broad authority to recommend "reforms to the Medicare Program" and to rewrite the Medicare Program from top to bottom.

In effect, IMAC would enable Medicare to overcome the political resistance to government rationing. Some facets of Medicare would be beyond the reach of IMAC's nonelected bureaucrats, but not Medicare's interpretation of "reasonable and necessary."

This council would have the power to decide the scope of coverage that would be eligible for reimbursement under Medicare.

Down the road, unless Congress rejects IMAC's recommendations within 30 days, they would become law.

Obama's first pick to head his health reform efforts, former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, proposed an IMAC - like panel despite the fact that "doctors and patients might resent the panel making decisions about matters of life and death." Back in June, in response to a question about "subjective" end-of-life decisions, Obama said, "I think we have to have rules." And who would make those rules? His IMAC proposal tells us.

Consider this type of rationing already happens in the U.K. Britain's National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) generally refuses to cover medical treatments that cost more than $35,000 per year of life saved. In Canada, the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority, canceled 6,250 surgeries that were scheduled from Sept. 1, 2009, until the end of 2010, to bridge the budget gap that they are facing.

Is this what we want in America with government run socialized health care?

Flo Corrigan

Schaumburg