Healthcare is a Dangerous Thing to Waste

by Charles Katebi

Contrary to the claim of Obamacare's supporters, patients have too much access to healthcare. When insurers cover most of our bills, we're encouraged to take every test and procedure our doctors recommend, regardless of their value. Obamacare has made this problem even worse by banning out-of-pocket fees for many services. The push to overuse medical care is not only wasteful, it's dangerous to our health.

Wyoming Senator Charles Scott raised the issue of wasteful healthcare at a health policy panel at the National Conference of State Legislatures Summit in Seattle, Washington.

The Senator asked the audience and his fellow panelists: does Obamacare "solve our fundamental problems?" He answered his own question when he said, "The real problem isn't [premium] rates, but excessive utilization. I look at any reform saying 'does it help us solve that problem?' And the answer I come to… is that it does not."

Indeed, roughly one-third of all medical care paid for in America is unnecessary, excessive, or wasteful, according to a 2009 Institute of Medicine report. Because insurers pay doctors on a fee-for service basis, doctors have a huge incentive to perform as much procedures as possible. And patients have no reason to question their doctor's advice when they often pay so little of their bill.

How does Obamacare make our healthcare system even more profligate? According to Senator Scott, "I think there's too much incentive to get everything paid for, so there's no individual responsibility. There's no effort to control the incentives for excessive use."

He's right. Obamacare forces insurers to cover preventive services without any out-of-pocket costs to patients. These include annual physicals, lung cancer tests, cholesterol screening, and many more. The Obama administration sold these "free" preventive services by claiming they save money over a patient's lifetime. However, these tests just add to the waste.

This is because most of Obamacare's preventive services provide zero medical benefits. According to the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, regular ovarian and testicular cancer screenings don't make us any healthier. Similarly, a 2012 review of 14 studies found that annual physicals do not lower the risk of serious illness or premature death. Despite how little we benefit from these services, Obamacare forces us to pay billions for them.

Wasteful medical care also endangers patients. In Senator Scott's words: "When you get an unnecessary test or medical procedure, it's very likely it has some small risk. Anything that's invasive, anything that uses drugs, anything that uses radiation carries some risk. For instance, the unnecessary CT scans carries a 1 in 2000 risk of causing fatal cancer."

This problem goes beyond unnecessary CT scans. Every visit to a hospital carries the risk of being misdiagnosed, exposed to diseases, or injured on the operating table. When doctors over supply medical care, patients often leave hospitals worse off than before. An estimated 210,000 die every year from medical errors. Distancing patients from the cost of their care only leads to more unnecessary procedures and greater hospital injuries.

Obamacare's fatal misdiagnosis of the problem is that more healthcare is better healthcare. At best, excessive procedures raise our insurance premiums and leave us no healthier than before. At worst, they increase our chances of being hurt or killed by medical errors. Socialized medicine isn't just bad for our pocket-books, it's bad for our health.