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Medicare head Donald Berwick: rationing for thee, not for me

by | 6:00 am, July 21, 2010 | Comments Off

David Catron points out more ruling class elitism from Medicare & Medicaid head Donald Berwick:

Berwick praised the heavy-handed rationing methods of Britain’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) and said, “The decision is not whether or not we will ration care; the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open.”…

Before Obama picked him to be our new Medicare czar, Berwick was the chief executive officer of an outfit he founded called the Institute for Health Care Improvement (IHI). IHI bills itself as a nonprofit charity, but it seems to do an awful lot of work on behalf of for-profit entities. As CEO of this enterprise, Dr. Berwick earned a cool $2.3 million in 2008. But, more to the point, IHI will provide him with private health care coverage during his declining years: “The Institute created a postretirement health benefit plan for its chief executive officer (CEO). It provides the CEO and his spouse medical insurance from retirement until death.”

In other words, Dr. Berwick has made sure that he and his wife will never be subjected to the tender mercies of Medicare, the health care program for seniors over which he now has control. Thus, even after he has implemented rationing programs modeled after those of NICE, he won’t have to worry about his wife suffering for lack of drugs deemed too pricey by some obscure comparative effectiveness calculation.

Read the whole article: Donald Berwick’s Motto? Rationing for Thee, but not for Me.

Paul Hsieh, MD connects this to a larger trend:

The arrogance of government officials like Berwick is astounding in a two-fold way.

First, they believe they are qualified to set draconian rules over the lives of the citizenry, because we are unable to make such decisions for ourselves. The typical excuse given is that it’s for our own good or for some nebulous “common good”.

But by exempting themselves from their own rules, they recognize (at some level) that these rules are actually bad for the individuals involved — but they don’t care.

Paul mentions environmentalists who jetset around the globe advocates of gun control who have bodyguards or exempt themselves from gun bans.  Read more here. To add to Paul’s examples, there are the politicians, like president Obama, who support the government school monopoly but send their kids to private schools.

Category: Colorado Politics, PPC
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