IN MY SHOES: My Run-Of-The-Mill Medical Plan Paid For A Medical Miracle
On the first (and one hopes, the only) anniversary of ObamaCare, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) reflects on the top-notch, life-saving treatment his daughter, Carey, got to correct a congenital heart defect that was covered “under a run-of-the-mill plan available to every employee of an Oshkosh, Wis., plastics plant” in this Wall Street Journal op-ed:
[M]y wife and I are incredibly thankful that we had the freedom to seek out the most advanced surgical technique. The procedure that saved her, and has given her a chance at a full life, was available because America has a free-market system that has advanced medicine at a phenomenal pace.
I don't even want to think what might have happened if she had been born at a time and place where government defined the limits for most insurance policies and set precedents on what would be covered. Would the life-saving procedures that saved her have been deemed cost-effective by policy makers deciding where to spend increasingly scarce tax dollars?
Carey's story sounds like a miracle, but America has always been a place where medical miracles happen. Since 1970, American doctors have won more Nobel Prizes for Medicine than all other countries combined. According to McKinsey and Co., thousands of foreigners come to the United States every year for medical care they cannot get at home - due to rationing or because it is simply not provided. And cutting-edge drugs to treat serious illnesses are more widely available in the U.S. than abroad. …
The plain truth is that the American system is better at rewarding innovation and responding to consumer needs. But the history of government-led care is there for all to see. Are we doomed to repeat it?
Carey, now 27-years-old, is a nurse in a neonatal intensive care unit and is studying to become a nurse practitioner.
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