Posted on 07/08/2010 4:56:19 PM PDT by Kaslin
Health Care: The president recess-appoints a fan of rationing and Britain's National Health Service to direct one-third of American health care. Why does the administration want his views hidden from scrutiny?
'The decision is not whether or not we will ration care — the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open." That's what Dr. Donald Berwick, President Obama's nominee to head the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services, told a National Institutes of Health publication a year ago, when he was just president and CEO of the Institute for Health Care Improvement.
Such views were to be fodder for a stormy confirmation hearing — except none has been scheduled.
Instead, Obama opted to make a recess appointment of Berwick to head CMS, an agency that oversees a third of all health care spending in the U.S. and that will play a major role under ObamaCare in deciding what care is available and who gets it.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell rightly accused the president of trying to "arrogantly circumvent the American people" with Congress out of town for its annual Fourth of July break.
Berwick could serve through 2011 without Senate confirmation. This sleight of hand involving one-sixth of the American economy and the man who will run one-third of that is the fruit of hope and change?
It is understandable why the administration would want to keep Berwick's views under the radar. He has praised the U.K's National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), which he says has "developed very good and very disciplined, scientifically grounded, policy-connected models for the evaluation of medical treatments from which we ought to learn."
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
Wake up America for the Sake of God and all that is just
And before it is to late
A lot of the rhetoric about the evils of “rationing” were misdirected during the run-up to the vote on the so-called health care bill. Of course there will be “rationing”. There was “rationing” before, and, no matter whether the bill had passed, or not, there would have been rationing in the future. “Rationing” is what economies do.
The concern should have always been WHO will do the rationing. Since the bill passed, then answer is clearly that the government will do the rationing.
To be surprised that a person who heads up one of these agencies actually believes in rationing is oddly also misdirected and seems to miss the point.
I hate to say this, but this article brings to mind one major difference between American society and Europe/Canada where socialized medicine holds sway. In Europe, when officious morons like this order people to their deaths, they obediently walk down the path to the ovens. Authority has spoken and they have been conditioned to obey even unto death. Americans, on the other hand, immediately find a sleazy lawyer and file suit. The evil Dr. Death and his apparatus are going to find themselves besieged by our litigiousness society. Even the sovereign immunity of the federal government will not protect them from the land sharks of our legal profession. There will be blood in the streets and their scheme may well prove to be unworkable.
Hope springs eternal.
Wonder if this baby doc also supports female genital mutilation?
Health care can work if it is done the right way. Doing it after the British and Canadian way, or expecting employers to fund it totally like some do is not the way either, neither is expecting the tax payer to pay for it with raising taxes
Perhaps one saving grace is that in the US denial of care decisions will be sooner or later be fought in the courts. In the UK patient mistreatment that would in the US be the subject of malpractice lawsuits apparently rarely get to court.
Ping
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Since our society won’t permit the rationing of healthcare services by price (as we do for other market goods and services), how else are federal and state service purchasers supposed to ration this expensive set of services?
Chirp, chirp, chirp.
Taxpayers sure don’t want to sign blank checks.
“...Americans, on the other hand, immediately find a sleazy lawyer and file suit. The evil Dr. Death and his apparatus are going to find themselves besieged by our litigiousness society. Even the sovereign immunity of the federal government will not protect them from the land sharks of our legal profession. There will be blood in the streets and their scheme may well prove to be unworkable.”
I hope so. But the problem is with most legal cases- especially something involving elderly folks who are very sick- by the time the case is decided in the courts after all the appeals..they might be dead.
Wow. Such a great calming comment to sooth the worry of the masses.
Did not work on me.
How to ration?
Oh, everyone else does not get care - my family does.
Or, “friends” of the party in charge get care - others do not.
The license to ration care for others will lead to some that are not so honorable using the license for their own person objectives or the objectives of the ruler.
Well at least the political class, which exempted themselves from this obomination, will get taxpayer paid health care. You, probably not unless you are in your prime 18 to 45.
You will see an underground economy emerge and flourishing, including an underground economy version of healthcare.
There is another difference between the average American and the average European...we will grab firearms at the drop of a hat. There is a little bit of the Bruce Willis Die Hard character in all of us. When things look hopeless we like to kick ass.
Obuummer is generating crisis after crisis in order to overload the system and make everyone a government dependent stooge. It ain't going to work and the clowns in DC will end up being surprised by the reaction they will eventually receive.
Nah, they are too busy with the Bachelor and American Idol. Too late, they spent 50 years dumbing down generations.
It may already be too late to change it back. At least by normal means. I fear that we will have to use the Declaration of Independence option to restore our freedoms.
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