The Prez Gets His Ration-Man

President Obama, complaining about phantom efforts to stall Dr. Berwick's appointment to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services(CMS) simply installed him to the post while the Senate is out of town for two weeks. It isn't just Republicans that are outraged by the president's maneuver.

"I'm troubled that, rather than going through the standard nomination process, Dr. Berwick was recess-appointed," said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, Montana Democrat. The Senate confirmation process, he added, is a check on executive power and "ensures that crucial questions are asked of the nominee - and answered."

The truth is that Republicans were pushing for a nomination hearing for Dr. Berwick, it was the Democrats that were stalling. They were stalling to keep the American people in the dark about the policies Dr. Berwick advocates and that their "health care reform" will make inevitable.

Dr. Berwick's views:

In 2009 Dr. Berwick told Biotechnology Healthcare: "NICE is extremely effective and a conscientious and valuable knowledge-building system. ... The decision is not whether or not we will ration care - the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open."

NICE is the rationing board in Britain's National Health Service. He goes on to explain why a rationed system is superior to our market-based model:

“Please don’t put your faith in market forces,” he said (italics in original). “It’s a popular idea: that Adam Smith’s invisible hand would do a better job of designing care than leaders with plans can. I find little evidence that market forces relying on consumers choosing among an array of products, with competitors fighting it out, leads to the healthcare system you want and need. In the US, competition is a major reason for our duplicative, supply driven, fragmented care system.”

Berwick argued that purposely provided an inadequate supply of health-care—as Britain’s health-care system does—is superior to allowing the market to provide an excess.

“In America, the best predictor of cost is supply; the more we make, the more we use—hospi­tal beds, consultancy services, procedures, diagnostic tests,” Dr. Berwick wrote. “… Here, you choose a harder path. You plan the supply; you aim a bit low; you prefer slightly too lit­tle of a technology or a service to too much; then you search for care bottlenecks and try to relieve them.”

What results can we expect from intentionally limiting the supply of health care?

Britain, has one of the lowest cancer survival rates in the Western world. While 60.3% of men and 61.7% of women in Sweden survive a cancer diagnosis, in Britain the figure ranges between 40.2% to 48.1% for men and 48% to 54.1% for women. And NICE's rationing has not just hit cancer patients. Doctors have warned that patients with terminal illnesses are being made to die prematurely under the NHS rationing scheme. And according to the Patients Association, one million NHS patients have been the victims of appalling care in hospitals across Britain.

Considering his championing of NICE's rationing policies, Dr. Berwick is the perfect person to supervise the $500 billion in cuts to Medicare that are mandated by our new health care law. It's a shame that Democrats by avoiding an open debate about the effects of their takeover of our health care system are keeping the American people in the dark.

Seniors should know that in Obama's America you better not get sick, because to paraphrase the Soup Nazi, "No medical care for You!".