Obama’s Medicare Chief Donald Berwick Quits

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The point man for carrying out President Barack Obama’s health care law will be stepping down after Republicans succeeded in blocking his confirmation by the Senate, an official said Wednesday.

Medicare chief Don Berwick, a Harvard professor widely respected for his ideas on how to improve the health care system, became the most prominent casualty of the political wars over a health care overhaul law whose constitutionality will be now decided by the Supreme Court.

Berwick’s Dec. 2 resignation was confirmed by a senior congressional official, speaking on condition of anonymity ahead of an announcement by the administration. He will be replaced by his principal deputy, Marilyn Tavenner, formerly Virginia’s top health care official.

Forty-two GOP senators – more than enough to derail Berwick’s confirmation – had announced their opposition to his nomination months ago. That started a countdown on his temporary appointment, scheduled to run out at the end of the year.

Berwick‘s statements as an academic praising Britain’s government-run health care had become a source of controversy in politically polarized Washington. Although he later told Congress that “the American system needs its own solution” and Britain‘s shouldn’t be copied here, his critics were not swayed.

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In preparation for ObamaCare many hospitals have had to make cutbacks.
Tests ordered by doctors will be reviewed rather than simply performed.
Certain procedures will only be performed IF you carry the ”right” insurance.
Janitorial, scrub and nursing staff are being cut.
The purchase of sterilizing cleansers is being cut, too.

Maybe we can become like the hospitals in the UK where you enter sick and catch your death of a secondary infection before you get a chance to leave.

Oh, goody!

@Nan G: Don’t forget that this is necessary vs-a-vie the commerce clause: we now have the obligation to hire more bureaucrats (not doctors) to populate the “Death Committees” and decide which procedures are medically necessary. Oh! and one bureaucrat equals at least five janitors. Can’t decide life and death and not be compensated well for the inevitable PTSD.

Not reported here but in the UK, where specialty clinic dental, medicine and surgicals have been private for a stretch, now has a previously NHS owned and managed hospital being transferred to private management. The new management pledges to treat all patients fairly including those only covered by the national plan.