The Dangers of Obamacare

"When our son was 7, he had a seizure. The doctor followed the treatment protocol of anti-seizure medicine. That stopped the seizures and, after five years, our son stopped taking the medicine.

At 16, the seizures returned. Our pediatrician insisted on an MRI. The MRI revealed a tumor that was cancerous but caught early. Our son underwent surgery, radiation and chemotherapy, and he was cured. Now, 12 years later, he is completely cancer-free, happily married and living a full, normal life.

Had the doctor been constrained by a comparative effectiveness rule and forced to prescribe anti-seizure medicine again, instead of ordering a revealing MRI, the cancer would have grown undetected for months or years, and our son likely would have died."

If CER becomes more than identifying generally best practices and therapies and disseminating them for doctors’ consideration only, then it will reduce doctors to mere body mechanics and plumbers. Medicine will become a check-list trade, no longer a profession centered on individualized treatment and judgment.