Dakota Beacon

President Obama has nominated Harvard professor Donald Berwick to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. In 2008, Berwick said, "Cynics beware, I am romantic about the National Health Service; I love it. All I need to do to rediscover the romance is to look at health care in my own country."

Imagine being in the same room with Berwick. The guy's love affair with the horrific U.K. healthcare system betrays the "thinking" of a smug, glassy-eyed pseudo-intellectual. Because of his "romance" with the rationing and lousy care delivered in the U.K. system, Berwick wants to inflict a similar plague on Americans.

Why should we be concerned with the romantic inclinations of an academic elitist? Well, for one thing, in 2005 Berwick said:

…government is an extraordinarily important player in the American health care scene, and it has inescapable duties with respect to improvement of care, or we’re not going to get improved care. ... Government remains a major purchaser. ... So as CMS goes and as Medicaid goes, so goes the system.

As head of CMS, Berwick will have the power to draw on his love affair with the failed U.K. system to force the failures into America's health care system. If confirmed by the Senate, Berwick will run Medicare and Medicaid, which account for a third of all money spent on American healthcare. Because of the leverage on care suppliers, even the private payers (insurance companies) follow Medicare and Medicaid's lead. Berwick acknowledges the point himself with the "as CMS goes and as Medicaid goes, so goes the system" remark.

A lot of power will reside in the hands of one anti-capitalist, zero executive experience, pro-big-government academic. Seems to be a bit of this going around in Washington nowadays.

American Spectator's Philip Klein expands on why Berwick's nomination is so troubling.

There are two basic visions for how to contain the growth of health care spending. The free market approach would give individuals control over their health care dollars, with the idea that it would encourage more shopping that will drive down costs and increase quality as has happened in every other aspect of the consumer-based economy. But the other approach, employed by nations such as Britain, is to have the government ration care to meet a global budget.

President Obama rejected the market-based approach, and sought to drastically expand insurance coverage while reducing health care costs. But according to a report by CMS's chief actuary, the new law will actually increase health care costs. That leaves rationing of care based on a bureaucratic notion of the common good as the remaining option for containing skyrocketing spending, and it's an outcome that Berwick himself once predicted would be necessary to achieve universal coverage.

Are Americans really going to stand for Washington bureaucrats deciding what health care can or cannot be provided by doctors to citizens who aren't even on Medicare or Medicaid? Really?

Ready or not, Berwick will be just the guy to inflict such a system on Americans. In 2008 Berwick wrote:

The hallmarks of proper financial management in a system pursuing the Triple Aim, we suspect, are government policies, purchasing contracts, or market mechanisms that lead to a cap on total spending, with strictly limited year-on-year growth targets.

Rationing, pure and simple. Berwick is a cold, calculating, "progressive" nanny-government advocate. Philip Klein observes:

On a number of occasions, Berwick has praised Britain's National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE), a body of experts that advises the government-run health care system on how to allocate medical spending based on cost-benefit analysis. Among other decisions, they have ruled against the use of cancer-treating drugs and put a dollar value on the final six months of human life.

"NICE is extremely effective and a conscientious, valuable, and -- importantly -- knowledge-building system," Berwick said in an interview last June in Biotechnology Healthcare. "The fact that it's a bogeyman in this country is a political fact, not a technical one."

Got a bum knee? Get that baby fixed right away baby, because when Obama's man Berwick gets hold of your health care, he's going to assign a dollar-value to your life at every step along the way. Once you get "too old" and not "useful" enough to society, there will simply not be sufficient "value" placed on your ability to walk to justify spending money on fixing the knee.

Incidentally, just how wonderful is the U.K. health care system that Berwick so loves? Klein writes:

In March 2009, a report found that up to 1,200 died as a result of "appalling standards of care" at just one hospital in Britain's NHS [National Health Service]. The Telegraph reported that "patients (were) left for hours in soiled bedclothes.…" In addition, "Patients described one ward as a 'war zone' and said people were often left in Stafford's A&E (Accident and Emergency) for hours covered in blood and without pain relief, even though they had serious injuries. Others were left without food or drink, leading some to reportedly drink from vases when thirsty."

In November, another report estimated that up to 400 patients a year died at two other hospitals, with similar conditions that included, according to the Telegraph, "lack of basic nursing skills, curtains spattered with blood on wards, mould in vital equipment and patients being left in A&E for up to ten hours."

All of the wonderfulness of the British system soon coming to you, compliments of Barack Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, a host of other congressional Democrat ideologues, and of course, compliments of Harvard elitist Donald Berwick.

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© 2010 Chuck Rogér