The media is justly celebrating the release from the hospital of a baby born prematurely at 24 weeks, named Melinda Star Guido. From the CBS story:
At birth, Melinda Star Guido weighed less than a can of soda – only 9 1/2 ounces. After spending close to the first five months of her life at the hospital, she’s headed home. One of the world’s smallest surviving babies, Melinda has been growing steadily and gaining weight since she was born premature at 24 weeks in August at the Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center. She is the world’s third smallest baby and the second smallest in the U.S. Now weighing 4 1/2 pounds, Melinda has made enough progress to be discharged, doctors say. It’s too early to know how she will fare developmentally and physically, but doctors plan to monitor her for the next six years.
That’s great news. But I wonder: Would the same result have happened after Obamacare was fully implemented?
About 7,500 babies are born each year in the United States weighing less than 1 pound, and about 10 percent survive. Most babies as small as Melinda don’t survive even with advanced medical care. A study published in the journal Pediatrics in 2010 found that many survivors have ongoing health and learning concerns. Most also remain short and underweight for their age.
In other words, the odds of such a favorable outcome were overwhelmingly against Melinda. her care was, to say the least, very expensive, and some of a utilitarian mindset might argue that her “quality of life” will likely be lower than the norm, thereby making the effort more a cruelty than a beneficence. Under such circumstances, I can absolutely foresee a situation in which the cost/benefit boards that are being established under Obamacare–using “evidence-based” coverage guidelines–would refuse to pay for such an extraordinary effort. Indeed, we’ve seen both express and implied advocacy in the popular media and professional journals for that very approach.
I am not saying that Melinda would have died under Obamacare. I am saying, however, that if you take the Obamacarians’ cost/benefit/utilitarian advocacy seriously–and we had better!–that is a very possible scenario.
January 21st, 2012 | 10:21 am
Before Romneycare/Obamacare, the United States had a terrible health care system.
Most Americans were dissatisfied with it and about 50,000,000 Americans had no coverage at all.
In 2005, America’s per capita spending on health care was $6,697.
The next highest in the study was Canada, at $3,326.
That’s “mean” spending.
What “mean” means is that even though 50,000,000 Americans had no coverage they were added into the per capita spending calculation.
In other words, the cost per capita was actually substantially higher than $6,697 per capita.
America was spending twice as much as anyone else for a system that is mediocre-to-poor.
Many of the uninsured were the working poor or unemployed.
It’s absurd for any Christian to want to go back to that.
According to the Census Bureau, in 2007, there were 8.1 million uninsured children in the US.
Nearly 8 million young adults (those aged 18–24), were uninsured, representing 28.1% of their population.
Young adults make up the largest age segment of the uninsured, are the most likely to be uninsured, and are one of the fastest growing segments of the uninsured population.
January 22nd, 2012 | 7:46 am
Your article is based entirely on fear, and completely void of facts. You can “envision” a scenario in which this child would not care? You state that it is a “very possible scenario”? Leveraging the story of this child to spread fear and hatred for Obama’s healthcare reform bill is a shameless act of political lobbying. Especially on a special needs website. New healthcare reform ensures that more children, not less, will get the care they need. And there is no factual basis for believing that the quality of that care will go down. Only fear-mongering.
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
January 22nd, 2012 at 11:45 am
Uh, this isn’t a “special needs” website and the opinion expressed was based on facts on the ground and advocacy from promoinent places. Hardly fear mongering. Warning of what could come. The way to show I am wrong is to demonstrate why cost benefit boards wouldn’t use “evidence based medicine” to restrict care for such premature infants, not just spout the party line.
January 22nd, 2012 | 7:59 am
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January 22nd, 2012 | 12:43 pm
All of medical practice is “evidence based” and always has been. More than slightly misleading to represent “evidence based medicine” as somehow a “new” idea that only surfaced with health care reform.
“Facts on the ground”? Really? Because you want to believe a political talking point in no way makes those talking points “facts on the ground”.
“advocacy from promoinent places”? Agreeable and like minded opinions from political foes of the current administration are based on party politics and NOT on medicine and certainly not based on the reality faced by the millions of poor in this country.
Interesting that you have in no way demonstrated that the child would have been denied medical care. Your references to media reports about popular public opinion on the topic of who should bear the cost burden have nothing to do with whether treatment would be denied- only that popular public opinion exists about money, taxes and placing the responsibility for paying (the costs of the treatments that are insisted upon).
Finite resource. Unlimited demand. Like most males of your education, wealth, social standing and upbringing you would prefer not to think about the plight of the poor and under represented in this country and you certainly don’t want politicians giving them any consideration.
Reform bad. Status quo good. The drum beat marched to by elitists of every generation.
January 23rd, 2012 | 9:34 am
@Amazed – you are obviously so amazed at your own brilliance that you fail to take a look back at history, which tends to be quite “evidence based”. You are the elitist – you resemble all fascists by arrogating to yourself, and others of your ilk, the right to determine who among us qualifies as “poor” or “needy” or “elitist”. You will decide who gets the hard earned money of the “unworthy”. And you actually believe that you’re not spouting “political talking points”? The facts are all laid out for anyone who cares to see – when a civil government starts telling its citizens that it can cut back on medical costs, which is beyond the purview of any government and which caused the problem in the first place, then you can bet your last tax-free dollar that some “unworthy” entity will be denied medical care. And your revealing comment about “males of your education, wealth, blah, blah, blah…” wouldn’t be a dehumanizing attempt to reduce a unique individual to a mere statistic, ala Hitler, would it? I am a 52 year wife and mother whose husband is unemployed, but I’m intelligent enough to read the signs of the times. I hope, when you hit a certain age, no bureaucrat decides that you’re a worthless waste of the all-powerful government’s money.
January 23rd, 2012 | 10:03 am
So from Harry, Laurie, Amazed, the consensus seems to be to just not question the program, or Wesley’s argument, but to just state that Obamacare will deliver miracles to all and Wesley is an uncaring Scrooge! The irony is thicker than steel: “Reform bad. Status quo good. The drum beat marched to by elitists of every generation.” Right on Amazed, who is the status quo now?
January 23rd, 2012 | 1:14 pm
To disgusted: Sorry to hear your husband is unemployed. I can see how that might make you a very angry person.
Godwin’s law aside not sure there was any point to your post except to demonstrate the tea party mentality and that conflagration of anger and hate that shares the same fuel source that powers the KKK. Marriage and age haven’t limited your capacity to rage. If anything you seem quite passionate. Easy to see where you place the blame for your husbands unemployment. Some targets are so much larger and easier to hit than others…
To Chris: Obviously I was questioning Wesleys statements. None of the posts you reference in any way say that questions shouldn’t be asked.
By the way I wouldn’t say Wesley had an argument to make. He was simply posting more of his wild and unfounded speculation that someone like Melinda might be denied health care if the system was ever reformed or changed. For all he knows there were treatment options or medication options that were influenced or changed based on the limits of her current coverage. No doubt under any future system there will be limits. There are always limits.
Denial of care is the spectre that Wesley wants to be haunting you. He wants to be fear mongering with the idea that reforming the system is “really” about denying medical care and that limits on health care coverage were never a reality in all the years leading up to reform and he wants you to believe that limits on health care coverage are the fresh creation of health care reformists and/or the Obama administration.
Pretty sure the tea party groupies have all bought that hogwash the same way they bought into birther conspiracy claims – they let their imaginations run as hot and wild as their rage expressed at public meetings.
Chris Reply:
January 23rd, 2012 at 5:04 pm
@Amazed, Limits on health care coverage are a fresh creation. In a private system, you might have trouble paying, but nobody ever said it’s illegal for you to receive medical treatment. Explain to me how basically requiring everyone to have a government permit for treatment will somehow magically create more health care coverage for everyone? Unless MRI machines grow on machines, the whole idea of a government-controlled process is to cut medical care for some and give it to others. But I’m just a dumb birther, clearly I fail to grasp the genius of this plan.
January 23rd, 2012 | 7:54 pm
Chris:
No need for magic or magical thinking required. Just an open mind and a willingness to do your own research.
Annual and lifetime coverage caps would be banned under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
http://www.familiesusa.org/health-reform-central/september-23/Annual-and-Lifetime-Limits.pdf
You may or may not be a dumb birther and you may or may not be an insurance company executive, insider or lobbyist.
I can certainly see how insurance company executives and their lobbyists would jump right on board with Wesley.
No way the insurance companies and their well compensated CEO’s and board members want the government to have oversight or regulatory authority to end the industry wide practices that have made them very very wealthy.
Chris Reply:
January 24th, 2012 at 1:38 pm
@Amazed, Again, your argument is Obamacare will magically create more medical services. Medical services are given by flesh and blood people, in real buildings, with real budgets and real time constraints, they don’t fall as manna from heaven. You say I must be wrong because I’m an insurance company CEO. Would that even matter if I was? If you think it does because I stand to benefit from repealing the law, why don’t you take the time to ask yourself “cui bono” about a government-run health care system? The government will not create any more medical services than already exist, so the only answer is they will decide who gets treated and who dies.
January 23rd, 2012 | 8:36 pm
Hate to disappoint those who would have us repeat the failed NHS experiment, but life and death decisions are now being made in NICUs across America using an “estimator.” The “estimator” is more properly called a calculator as it is being employed to make life and death decisions regarding resuscitation of extremely preterm infants. Right now physicians are using the “estimator” to determine if efforts should be made to attempt to save the life of fragile infants. It is no stretch to assume that DHHS bean counters will be using the “estimator” in the future to limit care that will be offered preterm infants. Oh, did I mention, the “estimator” is available on the National Institute for Child Health and Development (NICHD) website at http://www.nichd.nih.gov/about/org/cdbpm/pp/prog_epbo/epbo_case.cfm. Look for calculators for congestive heart failure, Alzheimers, and a variety of cancers coming to a hospital and Medicare office near you.
January 24th, 2012 | 9:52 pm
I came to this article through a “special needs” site: terrisfight.org and feel the topic of a premature baby’s miraculous survival as a platform for bashing healthcare reform is a stretch. Again, I will say that comments like “warning of what COULD come” and Disgusted’s and Chris’s implication that the government is going to ignore the elderly and euthanize the sick is very much the definition of fear-mongering. Talk about spouting the party line. I certainly don’t believe that reform will result in miracles, but it is certainly a step in the right direction.
SereDoc Reply:
January 26th, 2012 at 10:54 pm
Been cared for in the NHS lately?
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