The reality of ObamaCare

President Obama's Medicare chief, Dr. Donald Berwick, explains, "Traditional medical ethics, based on the doctor-patient dyad must be reformulated...The primary function of regulation in health care, especially as it affects the quality of medical care, is to constrain decentralized individualized decision making.

Translation: "You're not in charge of your health care. Your doctor is not in charge. We are."
Read More At The Washington Times
H/T Left Coast Reb

Jason Mattera attempts to Interview Medical Czar

It's been three months now since his recess appointment, and still no word from the new CMS director, Donal Berwick. In fact, Berwick hasn't granted any interviews, refuses to testify before Congress, and doesn't take any questions at public events.

To put this in perspective, Donald Berwick oversees the healthcare spending for one-in-three Americans and, as the New York Times put it, "has a budget bigger than the Pentagon's."

See more on Jason here

Gibbs does some slippin' and slidin' on Berwick

Gibbs seems to avoid answering the questions about recess appointee Donald Berwick

In an article published in 1994 in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Berwick opined, "Most metropolitan areas in the United States should reduce the number of centers engaging in cardiac surgery, high-risk obstetrics, neonatal intensive care, organ transplantation, tertiary cancer care, high-level trauma care, and high-technology imaging."

"There needs to be global budget caps on total healthcare spending for designated populations (ie-rationing)" Dr. Berwick says. "The simplest way to reach these goals is with a single payer system."
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Obama Nominee Loves Rationed Healthcare

During the debate over ObamaCare, the bill’s opponents were excoriated for talk of rationing and “death panels.”.....

Well the President Hired Dr.Ration

Dr. Donald Berwick

If President Obama wanted to keep a lid on that particular controversy, he just selected about the worst possible nominee for director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services..... Obama’s pick, Dr. Donald Berwick, is an outspoken admirer of the British National Health Service and its rationing arm, the National Institute for Clinical Effectiveness (NICE).....

“I am romantic about the National Health Service. I love it,” Berwick said during a 2008 speech to British physicians, going on to call it “generous, hopeful, confident, joyous, and just.”

With the creation of NICE, the U.K. government has effectively put a dollar amount to how much a citizen’s life is worth. To be exact, each year of added life is worth approximately $44,305 (£30,000). Of course, this is a general rule and, as NICE chairman Michael Rawlins points out, the agency has sometimes approved treatments costing as much as $70,887 (£48,000) per year of extended life.

To Dr. Berwick , this is exactly how it should be. “NICE is not just a national treasure,” he says, “it is a global treasure.”

And, Dr. Berwick wants to bring NICE-style rationing to this country.
“It’s not a question of whether we will ration care,” he said in a magazine interview for Biotechnology Healthcare, “It is whether we will ration with our eyes open.”

Read more here