Statement On The Appointment of Donald Berwick To Head Medicaid and Medicare

President Obama’s decision to appoint Donald Berwick to head Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) is a confirmation of the intended goal of health care reform. We were promised that health care reform would 1) mean better care for more people; 2) people would have more choice with more affordable health care; 3) People could keep the doctor and the services that they wanted. It becomes obvious when you look more closely at the bill and the choice of Mr. Berwick to head the system that bending the cost curve will come at the expense of patients in the form of rationing, and on the backs of doctors who will have their ability to treat patients using the best medical practices severely limited. These two quotes by Mr. Berwick himself say it best at a talk he gave two years ago in the UK – ” I favor expanding choices. But, I cannot believe that the individual health care consumer can enforce through choice the proper configurations of a system as massive and complex as health care. That is for leaders to do.” and “If a new drug or procedure is effective, and has some advantage over existing alternatives, then does the incremental benefit justify the likely additional cost?” This is clearly not the change that people were expecting.