What A Difference One Word Can Make!

Like any good parent, I make an effort to ensure that my children are well-versed in the classics. I use it as a bargaining chip. “Okay, you can read Green Eggs and Ham, but first you have to finish that essay by Jonathan Swift…” Well, the other day I was making sure that the classics were receiving attention by surreptitiously adding songs to my 11-year old daughter’s MP3 player. Imagine my surprise when I heard her singing “Excuse me, while I kiss this guy…”

What a difference a word makes!

I just finished reading the proposed stimulus bill that just passed the Senate, and comparing it to the bill that recently passed the House. Here is another case where one word makes a big (BIG) difference. See if you catch it.

Snipped from the Senate bill, page 133:

For an additional amount for ‘‘Healthcare Research and Quality’’ to carry out titles III and IX of the Public Health Service Act, part A of title XI of the Social Security Act, and section 1013 of the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003, $700,000,000 for comparative clinical effectiveness research, which shall remain available through September 30, 2010:…

And now from the House bill, page 151:

ESTABLISHMENT.—There is hereby established a Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research…

Did you see that? The word was “clinical.” In the Senate bill, the Council will study comparative clinical effectiveness, whereas the House bill only mentions comparative effectiveness. By not qualifying the word “effectiveness,” the council is free to make its determination of comparative effectiveness on any number of factors, the most horrifying (but most likely) one is cost. Was it an honest oversight? Did the House just not think of the ramifications of such vague phrasing? Given Nancy Pelosi’s voting record, coupled with the fact that I’m pretty sure whoever writes this garbage gets paid by the word, I highly doubt it.

Let’s look at how the results of these two bills would look in real life. I’m just looking at this particular section right now, and don’t want to touch the impact of $80 gazillion being fabricated with the wave of a wand.

The Senate version has an up-side and a down-side. The down-side is that new research, that holds a lot of promise, particularly for diseases that currently have some level of existing treatment, may very well be cut if comparatively superior results can’t yet be shown. The up-side is that we may very well get rid of embryonic stem-cell research, because there has been almost nothing in the way of results and adult stem cells are reaching clinical trials on new diseases every day.

The House version is bit more Logan’s Run-ish. Once “The Council” decides what is (and is not) cost-effective (by what definition?), the government will stop paying for any treatments, medicines, therapies or devices deemed not cost effective.

Don’t believe me? Let’s look at the current national health care system in the United Kingdom. They’re the pioneers of socialized medicine, and as such, are now running into the fiscal shortfalls inherent in such a system.

From the [UK] Daily Mail in August of last year:
Thousands of kidney cancer patients have been handed an 'early death sentence' under plans to ban life-extending new drugs.
Four drugs which can offer patients extra years with their loved ones have been rejected by the Government's rationing body because they cost too much. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence admits the drugs work, but says that if they are approved, patients with other diseases will have to go without. Campaigners claim the Health Service is being plunged into the Dark Ages, as other western European countries use the drugs as standard.
Instead, NICE has limited treatment to a drug called interferon that doctors claim is ineffective for 75 per cent of patients. Kidney specialist Tim Eisen, professor of medical oncology at the Cambridge Research Institute, said: 'Patients here are receiving medieval treatment. Together these drugs are the single greatest advance for kidney cancer patients in the last 20 years, yet I and my colleagues face the prospect of being unable to offer treatment that is absolutely standard in every other western European country.'
'This decision will mean that the UK will have the poorest survival figures in Europe.”
Wow! That’s the kind of health care system I want for my country! “Bill, you’re really sick, and we find it a lot more efficient to treat people who are just a little sick, after all, you don’t want to be selfish and use up the money that could treat twenty or thirty not-so-sick people, do you? So…uh…buried or cremated?”

Look, it’s a cinch that this stimulus package is going to be opening the door for socialized medicine. Let’s try to keep the camel’s whole head and neck out of the tent by making sure that the one word “clinical” is included in the reconciled bill that will be put before the Congress for final ratification. Make sure your U.S. Senators and U.S. Representative know that one word can make a huge difference. I think you should contact them very quickly, as the Conference Committee already is working on the reconciled bill.

Don’t worry, I did correct my daughter as to the Purple Haze lyrics, but then, rather than having to explain a homosexual reference, I had to explain the drug-induced imagery of “kiss the sky.” Maybe the Jonas Brothers aren’t so bad after all.