Oh, Dearie: Now CBO Finds That Another of Obama's Phantasmal Cost-Cutting Initiatives -- This Time, Preventative Medicine and "Wellness" -- Will Also Save No Money, and In Fact Will Probably Cost More

Whoops: Double-post. Let's just say it's twice as important as a normal item.

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He corruptly promised the drug companies he would't force their prices down, in exchange for an illegal campaign contribution to the tune of $150 million.

His supposed efforts to "bend the curve" don't.

And now his silly claim that just by running some more tests on people, he'll save us all oodles of money.

In yet more disappointing news for Democrats pushing for health care reform, Douglas W. Elmendorf, director of the Congressional Budget Office, offered a skeptical view Friday of the cost savings that could result from preventive care -- an area that President Obama and congressional Democrats repeatedly had emphasized as a way health care reform would be less expensive in the long term.

Obviously successful preventive care can make Americans healthier and save lives. But, Elmendorf wrote, it may not save money as Democrats had been arguing.

"Although different types of preventive care have different effects on spending, the evidence suggests that for most preventive services, expanded utilization leads to higher, not lower, medical spending overall," Elmendorf wrote. "That result may seem counterintuitive.

"For example, many observers point to cases in which a simple medical test, if given early enough, can reveal a condition that is treatable at a fraction of the cost of treating that same illness after it has progressed. In such cases, an ounce of prevention improves health and reduces spending — for that individual," Elmendorf wrote. "But when analyzing the effects of preventive care on total spending for health care, it is important to recognize that doctors do not know beforehand which patients are going to develop costly illnesses. To avert one case of acute illness, it is usually necessary to provide preventive care to many patients, most of whom would not have suffered that illness anyway. ... Researchers who have examined the effects of preventive care generally find that the added costs of widespread use of preventive services tend to exceed the savings from averted illness."

By the way, he also seeks to cut such tests as "unnecessary" and therefore wasteful. Just another example, after all, of doctors trying to trick you out of your tonsils and/or gold.

So these tests save us money two ways -- first, we don't run them at all, thus saving lots of money, then we run them like crazy, detecting diseases earlier and therefore saving lots of money.

We're going to be saving money by both not running them on anybody and running them on practically everybody. It's win-win!

Thanks to AHFF Geoff.

Also Save No Money, and In Fact Will Probably Cost More&bodytext=Whoops: Double-post. Let's just say it's twice as important as a normal item. ... He corruptly promised the drug companies he would't force their prices down, in exchange for an illegal campaign contribution to the tune of $150 million. His...&topic=world_news"> posted by Ace at 03:25 PM

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