Comment Re:A cynic's view (Score 5, Informative) 637
A board that reviews health care expenses and recommends cuts in specific areas isn't new with or unique to Obamacare. Every insurance company has one, and they feed off of an existing, independent board that recommends prices for the entire medical industry (and which is sometimes wildly off the mark in terms of current costs).
Unlike Obamacare, every insurance company also has employees (doctors, yes, but not the ones treating the patient) who can decide that a given treatment isn't worth the cost associated with it and deny its coverage, thereby in some cases sentencing the patient to death. That nearly happened to my then-86-year-old grandfather who was denied coverage for a triple bypass because he was already beyond his life expectancy. It wasn't until it was pointed out--twice--to the insurance company that he was still working 40 hours per week that the surgery was approved, by which time he was in the ICU on oxygen. It was his employer-provided insurance that tried to nix the surgery. This was about 2005. He lived another five years or so after the surgery.
I'm not entirely certain how the insurance-company doctors making such decisions will fare under Obamacare, but I expect that they'll still be around.