Normally, presidential recess appointments are made because the chief executive doesn’t have the votes to get his nominee confirmed. In the case of Donald Berwick whom Obama just appointed during the Congressional recess to be the new Medicare chief he had the votes, he just didn’t want the public discussion about the obscene truth of ObamaCare: rationed care (which is actually rationed health and rationed life) and yes, the concomitant Death Panel.

The WSJ sees it the same way.

The Berwick Evasion

White House respect for the public’s health-care views dropped another notch yesterday, if that’s possible, with its recess appointment of Donald Berwick. Circumventing Senate confirmation to appoint the new Medicare chief is part of the same political willfulness that inflicted ObamaCare on the country despite the objections of most voters…

Without any public vetting, Dr. Berwick will now assume control of a bureaucracy with a budget larger than the Defense Department and that controls 4% of GDP today, hitting 5.9% by 2020 if the Congressional Budget Office is right…

In an influential 1996 book “New Rules,” Dr. Berwick and a co-author argued that one of “the primary functions” of health regulation is “to constrain decentralized, individual decision making” and “to weigh public welfare against the choices of private consumers.”

He then recommended “protocols, guidelines, and algorithms for care,” with the “common underlying notion that someone knows or can discover the ‘best way’ to carry out a task to reach a decision, and that improvement can come from standardizing processes and behaviors to conform to this ideal model.” And guess who will determine the “best way”? […] This is nonetheless where Dr. Berwick, in his bureaucratic wisdom, will look for his “savings.” It is also where his personal view of the “public welfare” will have the power to trump the mere “choices of private consumers.”

So no wonder the White House wanted to dodge a public debate and Senate vote on Dr. Berwick. He’s a too obvious reminder of the price controls and care restrictions that are inevitable with ObamaCare.

So it begins. And the beginning of the end will Be November 2, 2010.

Related Links:

Health Care Rationing: Redistribution of Health?

New Ledger: Video–On the Recess Appointment of Donald Berwick

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8 Comments | Leave a comment
  1. RuBegonia says:

    Just more stuff to haul off to “the dump” after the November house-cleaning. Trouble is, POTUS has already has the garage so crammed full that we can’t move the car for the junk!

  2. Laura says:

    Berwick – he is CREEPY looking, he needs to be the one introduced to ‘end of life counseling’ and some definite ‘rationing’

    If anybody is going to get end of life counseling it will not be my family members or me, it is going to be those who attempt to impose it and they are not going to be very happy.

  3. varmint says:

    Page 79 “The Road To Serfdom”.
    “Any policy aiming directly at a substantive ideal of distributive justice must lead to the destruction of the Rule of Law.”
    “Socialists and Nazis have always protested against “merely” formal justice.”

  4. Maynard says:

    This is a basic, obvious, fundamental fact of any system of distribution, but it’s one of those things that’s politically/emotionally awkward to discuss. At a given moment in time, everything is in finite supply, and our economic system exists to allocate (or “ration”) it. If everyone suddenly decides they want to eat 10 apples a day (this example may sound stupid, but it’s a fair analogy to some new discovery that everyone wants), it can’t happen, at least not immediately, because the producers don’t have that many apples to sell, and the distributors couldn’t get them to market if they did. A flexible economy will be able to ramp up for the increased demand, but this will require time and investment. The effort and investment will happen with a free market and a profit motive driving producers. In the meantime, price increases will allocate/ration the existing stock of apples. The socialists will say this isn’t “fair”, but it has the advantage of nurturing progress and hope for the future. The socialist “fair” will replace market production and distribution with the command economy…First, thou shalt distribute as we tell you at the price we tell you, and then thou shalt produce as we tell you for the next season. In other words, step 1 is to replace market allocation with rationing. Rationing is inherent to the process of socialized anything, and we need everyone to understand this. And of course the promise of future ramped up production in step 2 doesn’t happen, since the individual players are no longer motivated to get the job done. The mandarins trumpet what they’ll deliver tomorrow to make you feel better about what you missed out on today, but it just won’t be there. So the rationing becomes more severe as the human spirit is removed from the equation, and the future becomes a low-rent version of the past.

    Gosh, I wasn’t going to write all that gobbledygook; I just wanted to say that rationing is inherent to socialized medicine, and it should be acknowledged by its advocates as a matter of simple intellectual integrity. Apparently the problem with Berwick is he’s actually got some intellectual integrity, and this makes him a political liability.

    I’m remembering how Obama swore up and down that if you like your existing plan, you can keep it, and socialized medicine will never come between you and your doctor. We all knew that would eventually be shown to be a lie, but I guess it’s considered bad form to acknowledge it as such so quickly and before an election.

  5. thierry says:

    hello, Karl Brant. let the next holocaust of the useless eaters begin.

    and we’re still cautioned about calling urkel a godless fing nazi….

    ascend to power through the alleged ‘ popular vote’ using armed thugs to intimidate voters and propaganda to inflame the prejudices of the masses. check.

    control the media and you control the message. check.

    once in power actively negate the powers of other branches of government. effectively concentrate all power by fiat or force in executive branch. check.

    never , ever argue facts but promote fictions repeatedly until they are the facts. check.

    deprive portions of society of their citizenship rights. exaggerate and re-enforce the rights of those who support you over those who oppose you( aka as some pigs are more = than other pigs). check.

    wrestle economic power away from private individuals and businesses and concentrate that power in the government. make the peasants dependent on that government for their very livelihood. check.

    wrestle the peasants rights to their own bodies and self determination away by controlling who breeds, who gets to live, who gets critical health care. check.

    hate those damn jews. check.

    all that’s missing is smart looking uniforms( sorry the black panther threads do not do it for me) and a few ‘work’ camps….

    • Laura says:

      And they are going to be on the receiving end of an unprecedented massive counter resistance beyond their arrogant, ignorant elitist comprehension, may they continue to feel free to continue to underestimate us at their convenience.

  6. Whitney_pip says:

    Berwick is bad news, as are all the other purveyors of socialized medicine in the Obama administration.

    Thanks for posting the link from the Central Illinois 912 Project.:)

  7. aardvark says:

    Obama care is NOW. Those of us in Tricare are already getting hit because they haven’t “fixed” the the “clever accounting trick” that allows them to claim “see, we’re saving money” after which they quietly but routinely re-instate the reimbursement to doctors.

    Well, this time they haven’t reinstated the reduction in pay to doctors for Medicare and Tricare (those getting care through the military payments to civilian providers). See how much Barry luvs the military and oldsters? Here I sit with a referral that’s not worth the paper it’s written on because I can’t find a doctor who will see me at the rated the gov’t will pay them. But I have coverage.

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