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Obama Wars Title: Rep. Hoyer: Obama Medicare Nominee Qualified, Rationing Already Happening Rep. Hoyer: Obama Medicare Nominee Qualified, Rationing Already Happening Wednesday, May 26, 2010 By Matt Cover, Staff Writer House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland, gestures during a health care overhaul news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, March 18, 2010. (AP Photo/Haraz N. Ghanbari)(CNSNews.com) -- House Majority Leader Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said the man nominated to run Medicare and Medicaid Services, Dr. Donald Berwick, is qualified to oversee the two massive government health care programs despite Berwick’s claim that the government must ration health care. Hoyer added that health care rationing already is happening in America. At his Tuesday briefing for reporters, CNSNews.com asked Rep. Hoyer, “Donald Berwick -- who's the administration's nominee to run Medicare and Medicaid -- said in a 2009 interview that ‘the decision is not whether or not we will ration care -- but the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open.’ Rationing is something the Democrats were accused of wanting to do during the health care debate. I know you don't have a vote on his nomination but do you support his nomination? Do you think that he's qualified to run CMS?” (CMS is the acronym for the federal government’s Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services.) Hoyer said, “I’m sure he’s qualified in the sense of being able to do this [job.]” Hoyer went to say he was not familiar with “the full quote” from Berwick and would not comment on his views, but he repeated the Democrats’ claim that health care rationing is commonplace in America through health insurers that deny care based on cost. “Clearly health care is rationed right now,” said Hoyer. “That was the whole issue in this debate: to make health care affordable and accessible for all Americans. Why is it not accessible to all Americans? Because it’s not affordable to all Americans, [and] to that extent it’s rationed by cost.” “So what we have worked mightily to do is to make health care available and affordable and accessible to all Americans,” said Hoyer. “That was our objective [in Congress] and that’s the administration’s objective.” Berwick, if confirmed, would run the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), an agency within the Department of Health and Human Services. Currently a professor of pediatrics at Harvard University and the head of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, Berwick said in a 2009 interview that government should ration health care, “with our eyes open.” “The decision is not whether or not we will ration care – the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open,” Berwick said. President Barack Obama speaks at Democratic National Committee fundraiser in Boston, Thursday, April 1, 2010, following a trip to Portland, Maine to talk up his new health care law. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)Berwick has also said that he is “romantic” about Britain’s government-run health care system, calling it “one of the most astounding human endeavors of modern times.” In addition, Berwick has said that health care belongs in the domain of “leaders with plans,” and criticized the free market as the source of most of the health care problems in America. As Berwick wrote in the July 26, 2008 issue of the British Medical Journal: “Please don’t put your faith in market forces [emphasis in original]. It’s a popular idea: that Adam Smith’s invisible hand would do a better job of designing care than leaders with plans can. I find little evidence that market forces relying on consumers choosing among an array of products, with competitors fighting it out, leads to the healthcare system you want and need. In the U.S., competition is a major reason for our duplicative, supply driven, fragmented care system.” In the same 2008 article, Berwick hailed Britain’s socialized National Health Service as “like the world we wish we had,” urging the British to “never, ever” change it. “The only sentiment I feel for the NHS that exceeds my admiration is my hope," said Berwick. "I hope you will never, ever give up on what you have begun. I hope you realise and reaffirm how badly you need -- how badly the world needs -- an example at scale of a health system that is universal, accessible, excellent, and free at the point of care -- a health system that, at its core, is like the world we wish we had: generous, hopeful, confident, joyous, and just. Happy birthday
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#1. To: Badeye (#0)
Of course it is.
#3. To: war (#1)
Nothing wrong with health care rationing as long as its the other guy's health care that is being rationed.
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