Regional news:
Obama pulls another fast one on health reform with CMS appointment
Tony Ondrusek is founder and publisher of Insurance & Financial Advisor and IFAwebnews.com.
In the same manner that he encouraged Congressional Democrats to pass health care reform legislation, President Obama is using a loophole to make a recess appointment to head up CMS, bypassing a fight in the Senate and the likelihood that a majority of Americans would again voice their disapproval of his brazen attempt to move the U.S. toward socialized medicine.
Donald Berwick, a controversial health care expert who along with colleagues wrote in 2008 that “the simplest way to establish many of these environmental conditions is a single-payer system,” using “budgets to take care of the health needs of a defined population,” will be the next head of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Berwick has said that he is against using medical technology to keep elderly and terminally ill citizens alive, even if they or their families wish to use extra means, in favor of shifting those resources to other, more-healthy individuals.
In other words, health care rationing.
But don’t take my word for it. Last year, for a newspaper article, he said: “The decision is not whether or not we will ration care,” adding, “The decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open.”
And what kind of model would he use for America’s single-payer, rationed health care system?
None other than the United Kingdom’s National Health Service (NHS), for which he served as a paid consultant.
Two years ago, Berwick sang the praises of Britain’s government-run health system, telling a gathering celebrating the anniversary of the program, ““I am romantic about the NHS; I love it. All I need to do to rediscover the romance is to look at health care in my own country.”
His romanticism with Britain’s socialized medicine displays his affection for a more socialized society in general. He said during his remarks that health care funding “must redistribute wealth.” He further explained that, “Excellent health care is by definition redistributional.”
Nice.
Recess appointments are not rare, and they have been used by nearly every president in recent history. But this case itself is a bit rare.
President Obama had already submitted Berwick’s nomination for the post, but when he discovered that Senate Republicans would fight the nomination he took the opportunity of using the very short Fourth of July recess to make the appointment. That, in spite of the fact that the Senate would take up the issue in a matter of days.
But his forceful use of the presidential appointment powers means that Obama can begin implementing his health care reform law more quickly, and, more importantly, the move will keep confirmation hidden from public scrutiny and will avoid publicity of the health care debate. Polls have shown consistently that Americans do not approve of the law passed by the Democrat-controlled Congress.
Some Republicans have voiced something more than displeasure of the move.
“This recess appointment is an insult to the American people,” Sen. John Barrasso, a Wyoming Republican, was quoted saying in the Boston Globe. “Dr. Berwick is a self-professed supporter of rationing health care, and he won’t even have to explain his views to the American people in a hearing.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) wasn’t so genteel in his remarks. He accused the Obama administration of sneaking Berwick through, issuing a statement in which he called the president’s actions “truly outrageous.”
“As if shoving a trillion-dollar government takeover of healthcare 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,” McConnell said in the statement.
Some would say the president is being disingenuous with his power, that he is trying to implement a form of socialism that Americans don’t want. But truth be told, he said over and over during his presidential campaign that he was in favor of dismantling our current system of health care — which is second to none in the world — and replacing it with a single-payer system where the government makes the decisions for individuals regarding their health care.
Americans voted him in. Americans are getting exactly what they bargained for.
6 Responses to “Obama pulls another fast one on health reform with CMS appointment”
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Marie Says:
July 7th, 2010 at 12:50 pmI didn’t vote for this marxist, but I’m being forced into it nonetheless. I think it’s a little rude & misleading to say “…truth be told, he said over and over during his presidential campaign that he was in favor of dismantling our current system of health care…” The majority of those who voted for him didn’t exactly really know what they were in for, not that this is an excuse for poor judgment.
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jeff Says:
July 7th, 2010 at 1:16 pmexcept wasn’t US health care just ranked about 14th or so in the world? not “second to none”. i assume you take this negative position cuz real change would eat into your profiting off health care…
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Laurent Colvin Says:
July 7th, 2010 at 1:23 pmThe author seems to think that we don’t have healthcare rationing now. He also seems to miss the fact that those who pay premiums ARE PAYING EXTRA to cover the poor who go to the hospital. He also misses the point that individuals will pay less in healthcare tax than they currently pay in premiums, and get better care.
He also entirely missed the point that insurance compnies compete to provide LESS service. Under a Single Payer System (where insurance companies would be relegated to high end plans that can’t duplicate services in the national plan) doctors would once again be competing to provide better service. The way things are now doctors don’t compete, there is no incentive for inovation. They are signed into a plan as slave labor. Is there any wonder why we have a shortage of doctors?
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John Says:
July 7th, 2010 at 5:30 pm“Polls have shown consistently that Americans do not approve of the law passed by the Democratic controlled Congress. ” hahaha. Notice how it fails to mention the PERCENTAGE. Of course some will disapprove. My neighbors disapprove of my Harley. BUT I SURE LOVE RIDING IT…… :)
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neopatetic Says:
July 8th, 2010 at 11:39 am@ jeff:
The healthcare systems of different countries can be ranked in various ways. If one were to speak of the number of people who come here from other countries for operations, treatments, medicines, equipment, therapies and so forth that they simply cannot find elsewhere, one would find we are far and away the world leader. One, even such a one as jeff, might ask how we became the leader.
The answer is that from its birth, this country has been all about freedom. At first, it was about escape from oppression, then it was about throwing off the yoke of colonialism, and ever since, it has been about expanding upon the concept: ending slavery, extending the franchise, and in general expanding, enforcing and making more widespread and inclusive our understanding and application of our freedom. Remember the words? “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” If the government is making your healthcare decisions for you, how do you call that “liberty”? If the government is making your healthcare decisions for you, what power do you have to keep them from just letting you die, or even selecting you for euthanasia (i.e., taking your “life”)? If the government is taking what you have earned by the sweat of your brow, what “happiness” can you pursue?
The genius of freedom is that a free market, in which a free people freely participate by right, allows people to choose for themselves. It allows people to choose to invent. It allows people to freely decide what is best for themselves and their families. It allows each one of us to decide what we want to do with our lives, and lets brains and talent find their worth. It allows ideas to compete. It allows each of us to try and fail again and again, until we succeed. Have you any idea how rare that is in the world? Freedom allows true creativity to flourish. Extremely importantly, freedom also allows for creative destruction: the process by which the inefficient and unproductive yields to better, superior, less wasteful ways of accomplishing objectives.
The ideology of the Left, by contrast, does not have freedom at its heart. Read for yourself the very words of Karl Marx, himself, as they appeared in his work, Critique of the Gotha Program: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!” — a slogan commonly appearing on the red banners of revolution that communists of that time bore aloft as they incited riot and mayhem. That particular phrasing captures the essence of redistributive socialism. It embodies the notion that the State should use its power to take (if it does not actually obliterate the very notion of private property) what is yours from you and give it to me, or vice versa. It does not do well, unfortunately, at taking into account differences in our level of effort, our relative thriftiness, or our level of contribution to the society, let alone the world. Because of that very salient failure to take simple human nature adequately into account, such societies sooner or later rob people of virtually every incentive to work hard and live on less than they make. Sooner or later, such societies also rob people of virtually every incentive to to create better computers, light bulbs, mousetraps, oil skimmers, electrical grids, air bags, artificial hearts, AIDS vaccines, and an endless list of other wonders, great and small, that large numbers of people want, need, or wish existed.
Dr. Donald Berwick has quite clearly spoken of his unstinting, enthusiastic support for the Leftist / Socialist / Marxist path. He is on videotape expressing his desire for taking us all hell-for-leather in that exact direction. That is his right. At least, and ironically, while we’re still a free country, that is his right. In marked contrast, however, the American people are continuing to tell pollsters something very different: over 50% still oppose Obamacare, months and months after it was passed. That is precisely why Mr. Barack “Transparency & Openness” Obama used the recess appointment power to install Dr. Berwick without an open hearing: he knows full well that transparency and openness do not now serve his or his party’s own, narrow political interests.
See:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/obama_and_democrats_health_care_plan-1130.html
Dr. Donald Berwick, whether or not he is willing to admit it, is anti-freedom and in favor of the government expanding its control over your life, my life, everyone’s lives. He sees that as a good thing. It isn’t. Remember: any government powerful enough to give you everything you want is powerful enough to take everything from you.
Stalin, an infamous redistributionist, killed millions. He took the land and deported or killed the farmer-owners (known as kulaks, they and their families, numbering an estimated five million people, were simply “never heard from again”). Stalin then turned the land over to peasants who had no idea as to how to do all of the things that the former farm owners knew how to do and had done for generations. In short, he put into practice that very redistributionism of which Dr. Berwick is so enamored. When the peasants were unable to meet their grain production quotas, they were allowed to keep little or nothing of what they produced. The result, predictably, was severe, widespread famine: “The death toll from the 1932-33 famine in Ukraine has been estimated between six million and seven million.” Like President Obama, Dr. Berwick and perhaps even jeff, Old Joe was thin-skinned, a tad paranoid, thirsted for power and acted with revolutionary zeal to bring about disastrous, wrenching social and economic change, grounded in nothing more than ideology.
See:
http://history.hanover.edu/courses/excerpts/111famine.html
http://www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/genocide/stalin.htm
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Chris Says:
July 8th, 2010 at 12:58 pmNeo,
Nice response but you’re wasting your breath on these MENSA members. History began on the day they were born, just like all lib/socialists.
