There has been an enormous array of naysayers opining on the health care reform law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPAHA) Public Law 111-148. The Tea Party groups across the country are predicting financial disaster if the legislation proceeds, and even if it doesn’t proceed. I suspect they have been drinking something besides tea. But, they’re interesting.

The Wall Street Journal last week examined problems with England’s National Health Service (NHS), where debates between the Labor and Conservative party leaders over possible increased spending for new cancer drugs have been raging. The Conservatives have proposed £200 million (more than $300 million) for new cancer therapy annually as part of their campaign platform, hoping to regain the leadership of Parliament in the fall. Sir Andrew Dillon, director of NICE (National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence), argued that the Conservatives’ plan would likely be wasteful and wrong where medical evidence is often lacking. WSJ predicts America will evolve into “NICE on steroids” if the health reform law proceeds.

Meanwhile, anti-immigrant voices all across the country are predicting that the new law will cause millions to flood across the borders for free care, particularly because with EMTALA such individuals can be admitted through emergency rooms and treated in essence for free. There may be some truth to this, but then again, they could flood across the borders to the south into Costa Rica where universal care is already present. They’ve got three years to wait here. 

And then, restaurateurs across the nation are really frustrated that deeply embedded in the bills, they have discovered that all chain restaurants now have to openly record calorie and nutritional content of all their menu items in the future! While consumers may find that somewhat interesting and useful, the restaurants obviously don’t like it. And, there are probably lots of other tiny little clauses that no one has yet fully noticed in the legislation. Many of them will get amended out, I predict. 

As I stated last week, the kind of mega-change under the health care reform is worthy of our serious focus and potential concern. But none of the commentators I have observed over the past few weeks seem to be aware of just what a precipitous course the status quo of U.S. health care would be if not addressed in some major way now. We need to start working to overcome the doom and gloom by emphasizing what can be done if government seriously considers the profession of medicine as its chief consultant in helping to produce a future system that improves quality and reduces unnecessary spending.

Photo courtesy of thepluginguy on Flickr.

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