DR. BERWICK: “EVERYONE BUT ME IS A LIAR!”
‘Fears and Lies’ Behind Death Panel Rhetoric, Berwick Says
By Robert Lowes, from Medscape.Com
Five days after leaving his job as administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Donald Berwick, MD, lit into opponents of healthcare reform with the kind of candor that he was not permitted while serving as an appointee of President Barack Obama.
In a speech on Wednesday in Orlando, Florida, at a meeting of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), an organization he once led, the long-time patient-safety advocate attributed the “death panel” rhetoric used by some critics of the Affordable Care Act to political cynicism run amok. The claim that “some plot is afoot to, literally, kill patients under the guise of end-of-life care,” said Dr. Berwick, was “fabricated out of nothing but fears and lies.”
“It is purveyed by cynics; it employs deception, and it destroys hope,” said Dr. Berwick. “It is beyond cruelty to have subjected our elders, especially, to groundless fear in the pure service of political agendas.”
The term “death panels,” he said, more aptly describes efforts to reduce healthcare for Medicaid beneficiaries, defund preventive medicine and community health, and let cash-strapped seniors go without medicine.
“Maybe a real death panel is a group of people who tell health insurers that it is OK to take insurance away from people because they are sick or at risk for becoming sick,” said Dr. Berwick, according to a text of the speech distributed by IHI.
“The Choice Is Stark: Chop or Improve”
Obama nominated Dr. Berwick to head CMS in April 2010 only to see Senate Republicans announce their intention to block his confirmation. They called him a proponent of socialized medicine and rationing, a label he denied. Characterizations of Dr. Berwick in the right-wing blogosphere at the time were even harsher, including “Death panel czar” and “Obama’s Doctor Death.”
The president sidestepped Senate Republicans by putting Dr. Berwick on the job in July 2010 through a “pocket” appointment while Congress was in recess. This special appointment was scheduled to expire at the end of 2011. He announced his resignation last month and stepped down from the post on December 2.
As CMS administrator, Dr. Berwick squared off with his GOP critics while testifying before 2 Congressional committees, the Senate Finance Committee and the House Ways and Means Committee. Republican members of the House committee were especially tough on Dr. Berwick, pressing him to account for his professed love of the National Health Service in the United Kingdom and calling his answers evasive and equivocating.
In both hearings, Dr. Berwick stressed that the key to lowering healthcare costs is not reducing the care that patients receive, but improving its quality, a point he repeated in his speech yesterday.
“The choice is stark: Chop or improve,” he said. “If we permit chopping, I assure you that the chopping block will get very full — first with cuts to the most voiceless and poorest of us, but soon after that, to more and more of us. Fewer health insurance benefits, declining access, more out-of-pocket burdens, and growing delays. If we don’t improve, the cynics win.”
Dr. Berwick told his audience that he considered his time at CMS “a privilege.”
“I would have loved to keep the job longer,” he said. “But, as you know, the politics of Washington, and especially the politics of the United States Senate, said ‘No.’
“But overall, I don’t feel an ounce of regret.”
Critic Disputes Dr. Berwick’s Take on Rationing
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA), the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee last year, did not respond to requests for comments on Dr. Berwick’s speech.
The speech did not change the mind of M. Todd Williamson, MD, a neurologist from Lawrenceville, Georgia, about Dr. Berwick or healthcare reform. A spokesperson for the Coalition of State Medical and National Specialty Societies, an anti-ACA group, Dr. Williamson told Medscape Medical News that said Dr. Berwick’s mantra of quality improvement misses the point.
“No one out there is saying we need to lower the quality of healthcare,” said Dr. Williamson, who opposed Dr. Berwick’s appointment as CMS administrator. “Here’s the rub. We think doctors should decide what quality of care is. We are trained to deliver the best care possible. We take oaths to make sure we believe that.”
“Bureaucrats and politicians think they should decide what quality of care is. They’re trying to govern the practice of medicine from 30,000 feet.”
Dr. Williamson also took issue with Dr. Berwick’s attempt in his speech to turn the table on his critics by saying that the true rationers of healthcare are those who currently put it out of the financial reach of Americans.
“When you say we ration healthcare now, it’s begging the question,” said Dr. Williamson. “Do we ration food because we have to pay for it? Rationing means when an authority figure takes control of a resource and doles it out. That’s what the government is headed for [with healthcare].
“By controlling the medical dollar, they’ll dole it out according to their own rules.”
Dr. Pinna says:
It is not bureaucratic manipulation which is ruining healthcare in the USA. It is much more simpler than that. It is money!
The insurance companies want more money from the American taxpayer. They own Obama and the U.S. Congress. They have always controlled the American Government. Dr. Berwick is one of their employees. They will “chop” way at health care, as they have in the U.K. Nothing will change this.
Today, Americans who cannot afford the unaffordable fees for surgery in the U.S. go abroad. Or, they die.
Dr. Berwick makes no mention of this widespread practice of “Medical Tourism.” Why? Because he works for the American insurance companies. The richest medical insurance companies in the entire world. Look him up in Google. He is a career “administrator.”
Popularity: 1% [?]
Filed Under: Economy
