Keeping with the promise of Obama and the congress for openness and transparency, Human Events (HE) brings us Donald Berwick. Berwick is Mr. Obama’s recess appointment to the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and according to Jason Mattera at HE he’s been less than accessible, refusing interviews and avoiding public comment in the three months since his ascension to the office, despite claims that he would address concerns that would have derailed any effort to get him there through the usual Senate confirmation process.
Derailed indeed.
Berwick is in love with the inefficient and decrepit British Health Service, and a fan of rationing of the kind that Sarah Palin and conservatives defined as little more than death panels run by bureaucrats and bean-counters who systematically deny treatments and medicines because they are too expensive. This is Berwick’s stock and trade, though he has had more invasive notions about the nature of the health system in the past.
“Most metropolitan areas in the United States should reduce the number of centers engaging in cardiac surgery, high-risk obstetrics, neonatal intensive care, organ transplantation, tertiary cancer care, high-level trauma care, and high-technology imaging.”
That’s comforting. So maybe it is no surprise that a guy with a budget bigger than the Pentagons is doing everything he can to avoid any kind of public comment—particularly in the run up to an election in which 219 House Democrats passed (deemed, summoned, called into being) the most unpopular piece of legislation (in the form of the kind of health care reform Berwick supports) in recent and even distant memory. Carol Shea-Porter and Paul Hodes are alumni of the Health care debacle with its kickbacks, and buy-offs and special deals for unions, Big Pharma, and favored industry leaders. As endangered democrats they will only suffer further if the likes of Donald Berwick succumb to questioning.
Has he perhaps had the HHS gag order placed upon him until after November, and how long can he and the Obama administration continue to deny appearing before congress?
Things will certainly get more interesting when the entire budget is being held hostage by a Republican House.
I’m looking forward to that, I must confess. Until then, here’s the production video on Berwick’s most recent close call, courtesy of Human Events
