Wednesday, July 07, 2010

Obama Names Rationing Expert, FreeMarket Hater to head Medicare/Medicaid

....Gee, could death panels be far behind? The Annointed One Barack Hussein Obama has named an avowed hater of the free market and an expert on healthcare rationing to head up Medicare and Medicaid. Seniors, you should be revoking your memberships in AARP now and going to their headquarters with signs that say traitors, et tu aarp? and the like. They have sold you out to Barack Obama and his rationing administration. Let me give you an introduction to Donald Berwick:
In a 2008 while speaking on the British health care system in the UK, Berwick said wealthy individuals must redistribute their wealth to those less fortunate for health care funding. Also during this speech, he told those in attendance that he opposes free markets.

“Any health care funding plan that is just equitable civilized and humane must, must redistribute wealth from the richer among us to the poorer and the less fortunate. Excellent health care is by definition redistributional.”


And, it appears he is an expert on rationing care:
With Congress officially on recess, President Obama will on Wednesday use his ability to make recess appointments to name one of his more controversial nominees: Donald Berwick, nominee to be Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).

The April nomination of Berwick -- president and chief executive officer of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement -- was in trouble and might not have been able to meet Senate confirmation due to comments Berwick made in the past about rationing health care. Even if Berwick could have been confirmed by the Senate, Democrats have little appetite for another round of fighting about changes to the health care system, Democrats said.

In an interview last year with Biotechnology Healthcare, Berwick said society makes decisions about rationing all the time, and that the "decision is not whether or not we will ration care -- the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open. And right now, we are doing it blindly."

He has also praised the UK's National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), which he said had "developed very good and very disciplined, scientifically grounded, policy-connected models for the evaluation of medical treatments from which we ought to learn."

Said Berwick, "You can say, 'Well, we shouldn’t even look.' But that would be irrational. The social budget is limited -- we have a limited resource pool. It makes terribly good sense to at least know the price of an added benefit, and at some point we might say nationally, regionally, or locally that we wish we could afford it, but we can’t. We have to be realistic about the knowledge base."

Berwick said the degree to which the knowledge base is "linked directly to policy and decision is a matter of choice. You could make it advisory, or you could make it mandatory, or you could make it a policy rule. But to remain ignorant of the cost implications of a drug that is marginally better than what is already out there is simply bad policy."

I am sure Zeke "Mengele" Emmanuel is pleased to have another person who advocates killing the very young and elderly, not everyone is happy, including some Dems:
Echoing Republicans, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) on Wednesday blasted the Obama administration for sidestepping Congress to install Donald Berwick atop the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

"Senate confirmation of presidential appointees is an essential process prescribed by the Constitution that serves as a check on executive power and protects Montanans and all Americans by ensuring that crucial questions are asked of the nominee — and answered," Baucus said in a statement.

Berwick had not been vetted by the Finance panel, nor had Baucus scheduled a hearing to examine the nominee.

Well, Maxi, if you hadn't help get Obamacare out of committee with that ignorant RINO dupe Olympia Snowe ("When press exposure calls, I whore out), we wouldn't have to worry about the implications of having a lunatic rationer who wants old people to hurry up and die in charge of Medicaid and Medicare.

Ugh, where do they get these people?