President [sic] Obama just made a recess appointment of Dr. Don Berwick to head the Center for Medicare and Medicade. For those Liberals who believe, either naively or with full awareness, that Obamacare will not lead directly to rationing, his appointment should provide a nice dose of reality. His comments over time have shown that he believes very much in the rationing of care and that it should be done with “eyes open”.
“The decision is not whether or not we will ration care—the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open.” <Dr. Don Berwick>
But whose eyes? Who rations care? Under Obamacare, the answer is the Government Bureaucrat, and therein lies the rub.
In his own words, the United States may one day find itself making health decisions based on the question of whether a health intervention “is so expensive that our taxpayers have better use for those funds.” <The Foundry, 7.6.10>
Butter-knife wielding Liberal killers. Is that your flesh they've carved?
Better use for the funds….
Better use for the funds….
Better use for the funds….
This means that many Americans will be allowed to die when their cases are deemed to be “too expensive” by a government panel staffed by bureaucrats. A legion of butter knives to bleed us all out.
In case anyone is still confused, the entire healthcare debate has been and remains about what system is best able to allocate scarce resources across hundreds of millions of people making trillions of decisions. Central planning never works in such cases. Ever.
The fight over Berwick is thus not just about partisan politics. Rather, it is the fight to create a health care system where a patient and doctor decide what is best for the patient, rather than a system where bureaucrats determine what treatment will give them the most bang for their buck. <The Foundry, 7.6.10>
