Aim High

05/30/10

Sebelius: Rationing Advocate is ‘Absolutely Right Leader At This Time’ to Run Medicare

Thursday, May 27, 2010
By Matt Cover, Staff Writer

(CNSNews.com) - Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said on Wednesday that Dr. Donald Berwick, an advocate of health-care rationing nominated by President Barack Obama to run Medicare and Medicaid, is “absolutely the right leader at this time” to run the government’s largest health-care entitlement programs.

Under the health-care reform law signed by President Obama in March, hundreds of billions of dollars will be cut from the Medicare program over the next decade. Berwick is nominated to run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which oversees Medicare.

Berwick, a professor at Harvard Medical School, has repeatedly indicated his support for rationing and for the single-payer, government-run health care system of Great Britain. After President Obama signed a $787-billion stimulus law that created a Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research--perceived by critics to be a first step toward creating a federal rationing system for health care--Berwick defended the program and rationing health care.

“The decision is not whether or not we will ration care--the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open,” Berwick said in a June 2009 interview with Biotechnology Healthcare.

At a Wednesday press conference on Capitol Hill, CNSNews.com quoted this statement by Berwick to Sebelius and asked her whether she agreed with it. Sebelius responded by saying she believed Berwick is the right man for the job and is “well-suited to help increase the quality of health care.”

“I’m really pleased that the President nominated Dr. Donald Berwick,” Sebelius said. “He’s known nationally as an enormously competent physician and an enormously passionate health care provider and someone who, I think, is incredibly well suited to help increase the quality of health care delivered to the 40-plus million Americans who rely on Medicare services and also the 30-plus million on Medicaid services.

“He’s written extensively, he’s taught all over the country, and I think he’s absolutely the right leader for this time.”

Sebelius likened an insurance company not paying a benefit it has not contracted for to the government, in a government-run system, rationing care to citizens.

“There’s no question, right now, health care is being decided by insurance companies,” said Sebelius. “Part of the Affordable Care Act is to make sure that the tools are back in the hands of health care providers and patients to make their own decisions and so I think his leadership at this time is going to be critical.”

When pressed to answer the question of whether or not she agreed with Berwick’s statement about health-care rationing, Sebelius indicated she already had.

“I just gave you the answer,” she said.

In a talk he delivered in England in 2008 to mark the 60th birthday of Great Britain’s National Health Service, the bureaucracy that runs that country’s single-payer health care system, Berwick told the British that he loved their system. ““Cynics beware,” he said. “I am romantic about the National Health Service; I love it.”

He particularly drew attention to the British system for rationing health-care by using government planning to deliberately create an insufficient supply of it. “You cap your health care budget, and you make the political and economic choices you need to make to keep affordability within reach,” Berwick said. “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.”

* * * * *

Thank you Secretary Sebelius for your explanation of the way life should be.

I am a retired, disabled veteran, and I feel like such a disgusting leech on the government. I have no earned income, so I pay no income taxes, except for the very high taxes on my military retirement and social security when I file jointly with my wife.

I receive income from several government sources:

There's my military retirement pay. - I don't consider that an "entitlement", I believe I earned that during all the low-pay years of being shot at, living in hot, cold, dangerous places and not being in control of my own life.

There's my VA disability compensation pay. - Don't even dare to call that an "entitlement", I believe I earned that by demanding to remain on active duty after being severely injured, and serving a career with a bum arm and chronic headaches.

There's my Social Security. - Is that an "entitlement"? Nobody ever gave me a choice to pay into it or not. I've been paying since I was in high school in 1960.

Then there's the Medicare (and Tricare For Life, the Medicare supplement for retired military people). Any "entitlements" there? Seems like I paid into Medicare all those years, and TFL was instituted to provide military retirees with the "lifelong medical care" that the government had promised them if they just signed up for 20 or more years of being treated like shit and being shot at.

So you see, Secretary Sebelius, you have hurt my feelings and forced me to justify to myself why I continue to take my little bit of money each month from the government I continue to criticize.

If you think that some illegal alien or ghetto welfare mother who has never lifted a hand for the United States is more deserving, then you just go ahead and ration my care, cut off the money, whatever you feel is necessary. I will understand. I didn't say that I would approve, I said that I would understand.

By the way, on the 2nd row up, far right, that gray, green and yellow ribbon is for small arms expert marksmanship.

Berwick said. “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.”

No, no, no, if you aim low, you may not get a kill shot.

Yes, you search for the bottlenecks and eliminate them.