Critical shortages of medicine. Ration ing of medical care.
Many say that’s what Americans will face if the government runs the nation’s health-care system, as Democrats in Washington propose. And that suggestion is certainly gaining credibility, based on the way Washington is handling today’s flu-vaccine program.
Doctors around the country are reporting that they’re rapidly running out of both the seasonal and the swine-flu vaccine, despite assurances by the Centers for Disease Control that both would be widely available by now.
Last month, CDC Director Thomas Frieden (Mayor Bloomberg’s zealous ex-health commissioner) vowed to “have on the order of 40-plus million doses of various types of [H1N1] vaccine by mid-October or late October.” (Originally, the feds promised 120 million doses.)
This, after officials helped create widespread anxiety by warning Americans — especially those in high-risk groups — to get both seasonal and swine-flu vaccines, predicting a likely epidemic.
As it turns out, only 13 million doses are ready.
Which means doctors have to pick and choose who deserves an early chance to be vaccinated.
As Dr. Thomas Schwenk, chairman of faculty medicine at the University of Michigan, told ABC News: “We are having to make difficult decisions about who gets seasonal flu vaccines because of shortages, and will have to do the same thing with H1N1.”
“This will be a life-and-death decision,” said Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) at a Senate hearing on the shortages.
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sibelius agreed: “Yes, Senator, all of that is correct.”
If federal bureaucrats can’t handle this program — despite having warned about it since last spring — how on earth will they manage a trillion-dollar comprehensive health-care system, if Congress enacts ObamaCare?