Another Marxist Appointment

The left sneered at Sarah Palin when she warned that with obamacare there would be rationing of health care and the government deciding who is worthy of medical treatment and who isn't. Conservatives were accused of being alarmist and of using scare tactics. But now we see she and other conservatives who warned about death panels were right.

Obama Recess Appointment Calls for Redistribution of Wealth
Written by Joe Wolverton, II
Wednesday, 07 July 2010 13:45


The latest controversy brewing over President Obama's proclivity for
circumventing the legislative branch (and the Constitution) is his recess
appointment of Dr. Donald Berwick to head the monstrous Medicare and Medicaid
bureaucracy. Those opposing Berwick's appointment describe him as a "radical"
and a "socialist," while supporters laud his "humanity" and "irrefutable
qualifications."

In his new role as chief of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services
(CMS), Berwick is charged with overseeing these healthcare behemoths and
implementing the vast array of Obamacare provisions that touch and concern them.

The fact that there is such a kerfuffle over Berwick's appointment reveals that
President Obama was almost certainly aware that someone with Berwick's
controversial notions of appropriate healthcare policy would likely not have
survived a Senate confirmation hearing.

In response to a question about the President's motives for the recess
appointment, White House Communications Director, Dan Pfeiffer wrote, "There's
not time [to] waste with Washington game-playing."

Predictably, Senate Republican leadership ascribe the President's decision to a
premeditated prevention of the public airing of Berwick's more dubious views on
the nationalization of healthcare. "As if shoving a trillion dollar government
takeover of health care down the throat of a disapproving American public wasn't
enough, apparently the Obama Administration intends to arrogantly circumvent the
American people yet again by recess appointing one of the most prominent
advocates of rationed health care to implement their national plan," said Senate
Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

Berwick is a pediatrician and a professor and alumnus of Harvard, holding three
degrees from that institution. Furthermore, he is the founder of the Institute
for Health Care Improvement, an organization undoubtedly most inaccurately
named.

The good doctor is an unabashed proponent of government-enforced rationing of
medical care services. Last year he told reporters, "The decision is not whether
or not we will ration care — the decision is whether we will ration with our
eyes open. And right now, we are doing it blindly."

Ironically, Berwick is blindly taking over the reins of the Obamacare scheme by
bypassing the investigation into his pronouncements that would have inevitably
percolated up from the Senate confirmation process.

In a speech praising the National Health Service of the U.K., Berwick made a
statement that may have influenced Senators called on to approve his nomination
that displays his naked socialism: "Any healthcare funding plan that is just,
equitable, civilized, and humane must, must redistribute wealth from the richer
among us to the poorer and the less fortunate. Excellent healthcare is by
definition redistributional."

Thanks to President Obama's surreptitious end run around the Senate and its
confirmation process, Dr. Donald Berwick is now the hand steering the ship of
American healthcare. Steering it, one fears, directly into the sheering shoals
of socialism and cutting coral of collectivism.