The White House Doubles Down on Donald Berwick

A steath administrator? How much can he get accomplished??

Kate, if all fails and the nomination doesn’t go thru (thanks to R’s and corporate D’s who cross over), what’s plan B? Appoint him again to another short term? A deputy who takes over by default or chosen to take over? And who’s that current deputy?

Dr. Berwick is the LAST person you would want running our health care system.
He is an avowed admirer of the British formula and this is socialized medicine at its worst. It is recognized as being the least efficient in Europe, hopelessly backlogged and poorly run. Yet this is the system he wishes to emulate.
The American public would be outraged if this man were to be properly vented and Obamacare exposed for what it truly is, a government take over of our health care system. Something Dr. Berwick unabashedly favors.
The American people deserve a vote and I think the mid terms clearly illustrated their sentiments on this critical issue.

What the renomination of Donald Berwick means is that “death panels” are still on the agenda at the White House.

Maybe the administration finally figured out that you can’t please liars and demagogues so you might as well pick someone competent and fight for him. I hope that is the case.

The fact is that the loudest opponents in Republican circles are simply liars.

They lie and say that the current system is a “government takeover”.

They lie and say that end-of-life counseling is a “death panel”.

It doesn’t matter if Obama picked someone who was knighted by the Queen or simply stopped in Heathrow for an hour layover back in 1995. The Republicans will lie, smear, and distort.

Anyone who will not reflexively oppose ANY Obama appointment out of ignorance or spite will vote for Berwick.

Berwick’s renomination is only a problem if you believe the lies told by Fox News and the GOP. He is a brilliant manager of health care and never said he supported “rationing” care.”

Paul Ryan, the guy that delivered the GOP’s SOTU rebuttal, literally said that “rationed care” would need to be considered in the “future” to cut costs. Why don’t they go attack him?

http://www.sunstateactivist.org/ssablog

It is stupid remarks like this that absolutely diminishes any valid argument you may put forth.

square1,

“The decision is not whether or not we will ration care. The decision will be whether we ration care with our eyes open.”
Donald Berwick

So, who decides?

You might have credibility if you supported your claims with links to your statements. However, without them, you are just another liberal TROLL.

Berwick in his own words. You can lie when he says in his own statements the following;
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jsfox,

That’s easy to say until you are on the other side of a rationing decision. Then your point of view might change.

The above response should read “You can’t lie”.
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Here is more on the good doctor.
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Doesn’t anyone besides me have private insurance?
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Healthcare already is being “rationed”.
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This is so silly.

More on Doctor Berwick
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Echoing a repeatedly debunked lie does much to reduce someone’s standing. There is no health care rationing or death panels in the ACA. Insurance companies are doing that exact thing right now by dropping people for pre-existing conditions or lifetime limits on payouts. That is rationing and it is happening now, not as a result of the ACA but as a result of the “free market.”

I have private healthcare insurance. My policy does not “ration” any of my healthcare needs. If yours does ration, I would suggest you find another provider.

newfreedomblog@5.2,

Berwick’s opinion of the NHS seems a bit nostalgic as the whole system seems to be coming apart. The system is to be “decentralized,” taking decisions out of the hands of bureaucrats and giving it to health care providers. That sounds good on the surface but will just accelerate the financial crisis as more services chase fewer resources.

Single payer systems are unsustainable. Their only recourse is strict rationing, and dare I say it, “death panels.”

Thank you. Silly and tiresome indeed.
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Do I like the way the insurance companies ration care now? How about the states that are cutting off the insurance pools and transplants for the poor?
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People who think it won’t apply to them if the current system continues are deluding themselves.

Paul_ no…@7,

If Obama and the left has it’s way, only the government would provide health care coverage, and there would be no appeal of their decisions about life and death.

GivenUp@4.3,

They may not have spelled it out just that way, but the inevitable result of ObamaCare is the destruction of private insurers and an eventual single payer system. That means rationing which means decisions about life and death. And who makes those decisions? Death panels.

Do you mean death panels such as in Arizona where the Republican govenor and legislature has slashed funding for much needed transplant patients, two of which have already died? Or do those not count?

A few random thoughts on the health care system.

1. You can’t lie repeatedly and then still expect people to engage you in an honest debate. Once you’ve lost credibility it is gone. While the GOP has lied about many things during the debate, the lies about “death panels” and “government takeover of health care” are so blatantly untrue that they permanently discredit those who make those claims.

2. The CMS position is an administrative position. The most important qualification for a candidate is that he be a competent administrator. Run the place efficiently and save taxpayers money. Even if Berwick DID harbor an unqualified love for the British NHS system it would be largely irrelevant because his position would give him no power to alter the laws of the U.S. The head of CMS cannot wave a magic wand and switch the U.S. to a single-payer system. Do Republicans have any evidence whatsoever that, Berwick would be a poor administrator given the constraints of current policy? No.

3. Right-wingers love to play disingenuous semantic games. Under ANY health care system, some cost-benefit analysis must be made in order to efficiently allocate health care resources. You can call that rationing or not. But to call it rationing when the government does it but not when private insurance companies do it is fundamentally dishonest.

4. If Republican politicians really believed that the government can’t insure quality health care services more cheaply than under the current system they would have LOVED for the Democrats to have passed a “public option” Then both systems could have competed. The private sector would have won. And the GOP would have been able to point to the failure for decades.

The reason that didn’t happen is that Republicans know that a public option would have been both efficient and popular. They would have lost the voters on the issue (as they have social security).

They didn’t oppose the public option because it would have failed. They opposed it because it would have succeeded and they are wh@res of the insurance industry.

Now there are some clueless teabagger true believers who really buy the Ayn Randian kool-aid. But the politicians know it is b.s.

5. Comparing the NHS to the U.S. system is apples and oranges. In America we spend roughly double, per capita, on health care. And we spend more per capita than any other country in the world.

The question isn’t whether the NHS is better or worse than the U.S. system (If you can afford a good U.S. insurance policy it is worse. If you can’t afford one then it is better).

The real question is how would the U.S. system compare to the NHS if you doubled NHS funding?

6. One of the massive, massive flaws of the U.S. system is how insurance is generally tied to employment. This is highly inefficient and ends up distorting BOTH the markets for labor and health insurance. When Rusty boldy proclaims “If yours does ration, I would suggest you find another provider.” I can only scrach my head and wonder what country he is living in?

The reality for most Americans is that they have little to no choice of providers. Purchasing a policy on the open market is invariably prohibitively expensive. And employers usually provide few if any insurance choices. You take the provider that is offered or you get nothing.

7. My sense is that honest critics of European health care systems have rarely traveled abroad, never treated in a foreign country, and have been bamboozled by propaganda. The rest of the critics are bought industry flacks.

So, is it just liberals who are trolls when they voice unsupported opinions, or is the standard the same for the conservative loonies here? Just curious.

Well said squares. I predict name-calling trolls will descent in 5…4…3…

npo42@4.5,

You failed to mention that the deaths were a result of cuts in Medicaid programs. Medicaid is a joint State and Federal government program and any changes by the state must be approved by Washington.

Thank you for saying that better than I ever could have, i notice it almost seems to have gone quiet now, did that really scare them off?

“Well said squares.”
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Very well said.

If Obama and the left has it’s way, only the government would provide health care coverage, and there would be no appeal of their decisions about life and death.

Let me get this straight: The ACA is some grand scheme of the nefarious “left” & Obama that sets out to eliminate the private HC insurance market by mandating that people purchase insurance from said private companies? You’re dumb but even you can’t be this stupid. Try posting something without your usual misinformation (lies) and right-wing dogma for once and maybe you’ll stop getting pwned on this blog. Somehow, I doubt that you’re capable of that.

Be very careful pauljb. The mere mention of “Death Panels” in the swamp automatically gives you the label of Birther.
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Now you’ve done it.

“When Rusty boldy proclaims “If yours does ration, I would suggest you find another provider.” I can only scrach my head and wonder what country he is living in?”

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Let me boldly claim in America, where I am now currently sitting, my healthcare insurance is not rationed at all. Albeit, the cost of my insurance has gone up dramatically since the enactment of ObamaCare. 40%
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The lies and distortions fed to Americans has been by and solely by Democrats in their quest to meet a long-standing party objective of providing healthcare for all. This has been justified on the left as some sort of “right” we should bestow on every American, which of course it is not.
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But, to top it off, we have the “individual mandate”. Clearly unconstitutional, this will for the first time in our country’s history demand every American purchases some form of healthcare insurance. Of course we have also had outrageous claims this in someway also is like the 1787 law requiring those who go out to sea to pay in the form of a tax, money to build hospitals dedicated to those merchant marines. Well this isn’t exactly the same, is it?
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So when we discuss the lies and distortions, let’s talk about all of the effort Democrats put into this new law. Everything was done behind closed doors. Everything was done despite the overwhelming negative support from the majority of Americans. We were told “you don’t know what is good for you” and that continues to be the basis for their claims. Lies, damn lies, and Democrat lies. Pick one, they are all one and the same.

square1,

Okay boys, I’ll give it a shot…

1. “You can’t lie repeatedly…” Why not? It got Obama elected.

2. Putting Berwick at CMS is sort of like setting the fox to guard the hen house. Bureaucrats have a lot of power to by pass the will of Congress.

3. Rationing means that you do not get something you need. Government rationing means that you do not get an appeal.

4. The “public option” was a back door attempt to install single payer.

5. NHS is being decentralized in an attempt to remove bureaucrats from health care decisions. This is likely to lead to more services chasing fewer resources and the inevitable collapse.

6. Open the insurance market. Remove restrictions on purchasing out of state insurance.

Provide the same tax benefits to insurance purchases by individuals that employers have.

Create an assigned risk pool for people with pre-existing conditions.

7. Wouldn’t want to get treated in Greece.

Democrats in their quest to meet a long-standing party objective of providing healthcare for all.

Damn those evil Dems. Next thing you know, they’ll demand that everyone has equal rights too.

But, to top it off, we have the “individual mandate”. Clearly unconstitutional

Doctor, real estate maven and now a constitutional lawyer? Impressive. You’re a regular Walter Mitty .
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So when we discuss the lies and distortions, let’s talk about all of the effort Democrats put into this new law every word you utter.
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Fixed.

Paulie, I’ve had experience with both free-market insurance through my employer sponsored group plan as well as socialized medicine through medicaid. I’d take the socialized medicine any day.

@newf. The 1787 law didn’t require sailors to pay in the form a tax money to build hospitals…it required them to purchase health insurance. And those merchant marine hospitals evolved to become the VA.
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@paulie: One point I’d like to make is that the ACA does allow insurance purchases across state lines so long as the state in which reside has formed a cooperation with the state in which you want to purchase the insurance. This is a consumer protection which will keep insurance companies from centralizing operations in those states with the most lax regulations.

If socialized medicine is so wonderful, square, then why not allow the American people to vote on it? Because it would fail, unequivocally. gallop.com/poll/102934/Majority-Americans-Satisfied
83% rate their health care either good or excellent. 92% like and trust their doctors.
The greatest fallacy is liberals KNOWING what is good for the American public, when in fact, it is quite the opposite.
Three months of my surgical residency were spent at the Royal London Hospital, London, England , with a few of their residents coming here to experience medicine from an American perspective. Candidly, there is NO comparison. We are more efficient, have better technology and usually, a better outcome. The patients are seen sooner and most rate their experience quite favorably. This is NOT the case in England, where most citizens are critical of the NHS and are not reticent in saying so.
So, put it to a vote, square, I dare you to do so.

If insurance industry profit medicine is so wonderful…

Life expectancy in the USA is ranked 50th in the world after the European Union (40th).[12][13] The World Health Organization (WHO), in 2000, ranked the U.S. health care system as the highest in cost, first in responsiveness, 37th in overall performance, and 72nd by overall level of health (among 191 member nations included in the study).[14][15] The Commonwealth Fund ranked the United States last in the quality of health care among similar countries,[16] and notes U.S. care costs the most.[17]
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According to the Institute of Medicine of the United States National Academies, the USA is the “only wealthy, industrialized nation that does not ensure that all citizens have coverage” (i.e., some kind of private or public health insurance).[18][19] The same Institute of Medicine report notes that “Lack of health insurance causes roughly 18,000 unnecessary deaths every year in the United States.”[18] while a 2009 Harvard study published in the American Journal of Public Health found a much higher figure of more than 44,800 excess deaths annually in the United States due to Americans lacking health insurance.[20][21] More broadly, the total number of people in the United States, whether insured or uninsured, who die because of lack of medical care was estimated in a 1997 analysis to be nearly 100,000 per year.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_the_United_States

A few more random thoughts:

1. Correlation does not equal causation. The fact that health insurance premiums continue to rise significantly after the passage of ACA does not mean that the those increases were CAUSED by ACA. Indeed, since most of the provisisions of ACA have not kicked in, changes in premiums, whether increases or decreases, cannot be attributed to the new laws.

2. Earljr asks “If socialized medicine is so wonderful, square, then why not allow the American people to vote on it?”

Funny. That’s exactly what liberals proposed. We proposed that a non-subsidized, government insurance plan be allowed to compete with private insurance companies. We proposed that Americans be permitted to vote with their wallets for whatever they wanted. If you want Blue Cross, go for it. If you want the government option, so be it. As I said, Republicans opposed this free-market based system of choosing the most insurance system.

3. Nobody suggests that, in general, the federal government should be providing health services. Liberals proposed that the government be given an opportunity to provide health insurance.

Saying that you don’t want government-employed doctors is like saying that you don’t want chimpanzee doctors. Congratulations. Nobody is disagreeing with you.

4. Unlike right-wingers, liberals are not ideologically blinkered. We do not assume that all policy solutions are obvious and simply require the right “values”. For example, I supported a public option because I believe that the government, with its relatively low overhead and large pool of insureds, could compete favorably with private insurers and provide services at lower costs.

But I was prepared to be proven wrong. If it turned out that a well-managed public option could not attract customers and charge less for equal services, I would have said to scrap it. I don’t give a damn. I just want lower insurance premiums.

But right-wingers have a comic-book picture of liberals. They have this absurd vision of millions of liberals conspiring to screw up life in the U.S. I don’t know who they think these liberals are or where they live. I doubt they think their friends and neighbors are engaged in this conspiracy.

But this pathological belief that a large percentage of the country is actively trying to destroy their lives, for absolutely no reason, borders on mental illness.

5. I am not a fan of the individual mandate. And I agree that the individual mandate system is arguably, though not certainly, unconstitutional. But, regardless of the constitutionality, I believe it is the wrong approach.

That being said, it bears remembering that it was an approach that was initially raised by Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats as an alternative to more liberal solutions like a public option or single-payer.

And it was a compromise approach that was settled upon by the administration in order to placate Blue Dogs and attract GOP support.

6. The tax benefits for providing health insurance are favored by large corporations, who enjoy having their employees at their mercy. Employer-provided health insurance favors large corporations over small corporations. And it favors large corporations over individuals. The GOP will never support reforming it.

7. The Republicans have no answer to the rising cost of health insurance. They are opposed to single payer. They are opposed to a public option. They are opposed to price controls and industry regulation. They are opposed to drug importation. They are opposed to the government leveraging its purchasing power to hold prices down.

Fine. What’s their solution? What will they do to lower premiums? Crickets…..

The proposals that the GOP has suggested are not really intended to hold costs down.

“Selling insurance across state lines” Isn’t about increasing competition. It is about evading insurance regulations.

I have no problem with increasing competition. I have a problem with Americans being bamboozled into buying out-of-state insurance and requiring them to become familiar with 50 different state insurance regulation schemes.

paulejb: What type of health insurance do you have? An HMO or PPO. Or, an endemnity plan. In all cases, the insurance companies make potentially life and death decisions about the health care you can access. You probably can appeal their decision but the arbitration decision is final. No court can intercede.
Unless you can pay for all you health care needs independent of insurance, you are already at the mercy of “death panels” run by private insurance.

“2. Earljr asks “If socialized medicine is so wonderful, square, then why not allow the American people to vote on it?”
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Funny. That’s exactly what liberals proposed. We proposed that a non-subsidized, government insurance plan be allowed to compete with private insurance companies. We proposed that Americans be permitted to vote with their wallets for whatever they wanted. If you want Blue Cross, go for it. If you want the government option, so be it. As I said, Republicans opposed this free-market based system of choosing the most insurance system.”
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In spite of the fact that the American people liked it just fine:

Narrowing our focus just to the public option, we find that opinion is not so much mixed as it is broadly supportive. Most polls show the public option, variously described, gains the favor of clear majorities of Americans. For example, recent polling by Altman’s organization, the Kaiser Family Foundation, finds support for the public option across two different ways of asking about it. (Kaiser asked half of respondents in their poll to say yea or nay to this proposal: “Creating a government-administered public health insurance option similar to Medicare to compete with private health insurance plans,” with the other half responding to the same proposal but without the “. . . similar to Medicare” phrase. The two alternatives get 57% and 59% support.)

http://pollingmatters.gallup.com/2009/10/update-people-and-healthcare-reform.html

As person who has had “private” health insurance through most my life, I would like remind everyone of the policies that are already in effect that that have been for decades. That you only typically get so many visits tp your Dr. a year. Or that you have a condition that needs preapproval for your health insurer to OK payment and if you are turned down to whom do you turn, yourself? Lets say you are having mental issues and you need to a mental health professional. Not only in most cases does have to be “preapproved” But do you get to see the best person for your problems, namely a psychiatrist who is Dr. and a mental health specialist, No you don’t in most all cases they will insist on you going to Psychologist which would fine if all such difficulties were to have their origin within the mind but removes the organic side from consideration and as a possible treatment option. Hmmm, sounds like rationing to me. The Congressman have very good heath insurance already paid for 100% by (gasp) the U.S. Government! I would invite those gentlemen who seem to have problem with a national health insurance that they should remove themselves from that program and buy actual “private” I use the term loosely for most get some public funding already, and endure what many unfortunate Americans face EVERYDAY.

Years ago I had been unemployed for a period of some months my unemployment insurance benefits had run out and I had a wife and baby to support. I felt they were more important then my pride and I ventured in to the public assistance system, to me an almost totally unknown. Fortunately, we lived in state that ALLOWED two parent households so that we could remain together as a family. This not always true in many cases then or now. I continued to look for employment and after some month found a job. It even had health insurance! When my wife went the clinic where she received her pre-natal care, for our second child, and presented our brand new Health Insurance ID Card. She was told that it would not cover the pregnancy as it was a preexisting condition! I started sweat, so to speak, having a general idea of what the out of pocket costs would be. Fortunately, our Medicaid was extended to cover us until the private insurer picked our care fully a matter of some months it turned out. Death panels? They are already with us! They are called Private Health Insurance Companies. If you are denied benefits though them, to whom do you turn?

correction: indemnity

erieangel@4.7,

Those poor folks in Arizona might disagree with you but they can’t because they’re dead. That’s Medicaid for you.

apr2563@4.8,

Let’s just say that the arrangements that I and my family have made for health coverage serves us will. What we do not need is to have big government interfering in the arrangements we have made.

There can be nothing worse than a one size fits all big government health plan. It would be a race to the bottom.

newfreedomblog@5.6,

It’s that damn Neil Abercrombie. He dredged that birth certificate issue back up just as it was beginning to die out. First he claims that he will produce the original birth certificate and now he claims that he can’t find it. What’s up with that?

Now we have to hear “birther” this, and “birther” that from every liberal source. A pox on Abercrombie’s pineapple.

diecash1@7.4,

Let’s hear it from the horse’s mouth, shall we?

diecash1@7.4,

And if 7.6 is not enough. There’s this…

Any questions?

NEWS ALERT…

ObamaCare is not universal health care, It still leaves millions uninsured. Why all the bother?

April, you have overstated your case. Prior to Obamacare, your physician largely determined how your care was managed. We consulted the patient and patient’s family in determining our course of action and then set the wheels in motion to obtain the insurance companies acquiescence. We were usually successful 90% of the time in moving forward.
Sadly, under Obamacare, this will no longer be the case.

I don’t think this has dawned on our liberal friends, paulejb. They are simply blind to the MANY deficiencies in this ludicrous legislation.
To them, it is Obamacare, come hell or high water and forget about fixing it, for it is all some dastardly Republican plot!

Yeah, I’ve still have a question. How is it that you’re this slow? Your videos prove precisely nothing. Perhaps I missed the moment in the entire HCR process where Obama made a stand for single payer or the public option. I suspect it only happened in your fevered imagination. You realize that the ACA actually expands private HC don’t you? Try some facts for a change, maybe get a little oxygen. It might improve your comprehension.

diecash1@7.8,

You obviously did not watch the videos. Barney lets the cat out of the bag by admitting that “single payer” does not have the votes to pass, but the “public option” is the best way to slip it in the back door.