Earlier this week, Dr. Donald Berwick, the Harvard pediatrician and university professor, was sworn to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, with a budget of over $800 billion and 90 million patients. Berwick has earned a national reputation for his work providing guidelines to improve health care quality. But pro-life groups and other critics of Obamacare are worrried about Berwick's long paper trail of public statements both supporting Britain's government-run system, and criticizing America's patchwork approach that provides a large role for the private sector. Berwick's critics contend that his ideas reflect the Obama administration's preference for federal control over the health care system. I covered the story for the National Catholic Register.
Opponants of Berwick's appointment include Burke Balch, director of the Powell Center for Medical Ethics at the National, who said, "Dr. Berwick has a long history of advocating governmental rationing of health care, including life-saving medical treatment."
As I note, "Berwick’s controversial public record includes this passage from a 1994 article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association: “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.”
But Sister Carol Keehan, president and CEO of the Catholic Health Association, said she endorsed Berwick and defended his comments about rationing: “We have the worst rationing of health care of any industrialized nation: When you get told you need surgery, you have to ask your insurance company, ‘May I?’ And if you don’t have insurance, you need to find a program for the poor. We have terrible rationing right now.”
Comments