President Obama is using the July 4th recess of the Senate to appoint Donald Berwick the administrator of Medicare and Medicaid. The question is why?
Berwick was nominated to the post a few months back and the hearings on the nomination were awaiting Berwick's furnishing of written answers to question from the Senate Committee. there was no indication that the nomination would not have passed the committee or the full senate. Indeed, the delay to date has been due to Berwicks own slowness in responding to the committee's requests for information.
To me, this sets off alarm bells. My guess is that there are items in the requested information that would have deeply embarrassed Obama and his nominee. We already know that Berwick is an advocate of healthcare rationing. We further know that he has publicly extolled the British method of setting limits on the amount of funds that can be spent to prolong a person's life by 6 months. In the UK, that amount is $22,000. In other words, Berwick is of the opinion that expensive cancer treatments with less than a 50% chance of success cannot be paid for. Simply put, those folks just die. Or as Obama once said, "It may be time to tell Grandma to take the pain pill."
So Berwick is the embodiment of those "death panels" that Sarah Palin spoke about and which the Obamacrats claimed not to exist.
Berwick is also of the opinion that healthcare has to be the same for all people, and that it must be a method for redistribution of wealth. Coupling this with rationing, this means that those who now get good health care will need to be brought down to the second rate care received by others so that all get the same thing.
It is no wonder that Obama and his staff do not want those hearings prior to the elections.
I strongly suggest that the Republicans call for the continuation of the hearings based upon the exisitng nomination of Berwick. If Obama wants to withdraw that nomination, let him do so. He will further expose his true purposeby doing so.
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