Who Is This Man?
Vince Scriboni
August 5, 2010
Let me introduce you to Dr. Donald Berwick. He has been in the news because Barack Obama circumvented the Senate confirmation process and granted a recess appointment to Dr Berwick, who is now the director of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). This federal agency runs Medicare and Medicaid; the same federal agencies that are slated to oversee the government run health care system.
Dr. Berwick is a professor at the Harvard Medical School and the President and CEO of the think tank, Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI). He has openly expressed his disdain for free-market health care and opening expressed his support for Great Britain’s health care system. He is an advocate of health-care rationing and supports using the health-care system as a vehicle to redistribute wealth.
In April 2010, Obama sent Berwick’s name to the Senate for confirmation and it was assigned to the Senate Finance Committee for scheduling and approval. The Senate Finance Committee is chaired by Sen. Max Baucus (D- MT), who had worked with the Obama Administration to develop the national health care program. The directorship of the CMS normally requires a Senate confirmation, which Sen. Baucus had not yet scheduled when Obama made Berwick a “recess appointment” on July 7, 2010. It should be noted that every president uses recess appointments. But by a wide margin, the overwhelming majority of recess appointments come after hearings have been held and a nominee thoroughly vetted. But, this was not the case with Berwick.
In May 2010, Dr Berwick was quoted in the Health Care News as saying; “You could have protected the wealthy and the well, instead of recognizing that sick people tend to be poorer and that poor people tend to be sicker and that 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.”
Berwick advocates cutting health costs by adopting some of the approaches of Great Britain’s National Health Services (NHS) and its National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE). NICE evaluates the costs and effectiveness of medical therapy that is covered by the NHS, as guidance for local authorities to decide what to cover. Conservative American critics claimed in the June 4, 2010 issue of The Weekly Standard that, “NICE decides which healthcare people will get and which they won’t.” Philip Klein in The American Spectator dubbed him “Obama’s Rationing Man.” The chairman of NICE refuted these statements. On May 14, 2010 in the Boston Globe, Sen. John Kerry (D- MA) defended Dr. Berwick against “phony assertions” and accused Republicans of using an “attack machine [to] make his nomination a distorted referendum on reform.”
All of this debate over this “recess appointment” makes it very clear that the White House knew that Berwick may not survive the Senate confirmation hearings, which would have turned into a debate over health care reform. White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer wrote on the White House blog; “There is no time to waste with Washington game playing.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and other Republicans contend that the White House wants to muzzle any debate over Berwick’s views. McConnell said in a statement that, “As if shoving a trillion dollar government takeover of health care down the throat of a disapproving American public wasn’t enough, apparently the Obama Administration intends to arrogantly circumvent the American people yet again by recess appointing one of the most prominent advocates of rationed health care to implement their national plan. Democrats haven’t scheduled so much as a committee hearing for Donald Berwick, but the mere possibility of allowing the American people the opportunity to hear what he intends to do with their healthcare is evidently reason enough for this Administration to sneak him through without public scrutiny.”
The reality of all of this is that, much like Obama, Berwick has little management experience and is about to head an agency that has more funds to “redistribute” then all but the top 15 economies in the world! This “recess appointment” is a demonstration of this administrations unwillingness to have any debate about Berwick’s views as it pertains to health care. It is a disgrace that thanks to the White House’s decision, the people of this country will not get the answers they deserve. Where is the transparency in government that was promised…What happened to “No Back Room” deals? Remember, Berwick’s position as the head of the CMS gives him the ability to apply his views on Obamacare with reckless abandon. He will not have to answer one question before he takes over a position where his socialistic and radical views will impact each and every American.