Yesterday, I suggested that the Obama nominee we really need to worry about is not Elena Kagan. She, after all, will be a mere Supreme Court justice. She won’t have anywhere near the power over our daily lives that Donald Berwick will enjoy if he is confirmed as the Administrator of CMS.
If you’re not convinced, read this piece by Hal Scherz, a pediatric surgeon and faculty member at Emory University Medical School. Dr. Scherz points out that Berwick is a vocal advocate of government-imposed rationing, but that he won’t be there to deliver the bad news to real patients:
Dr Berwick will not be there with us at the patient’s bedside looking them in the eye and telling them that the life saving treatment that they need is not approved because they don’t fit into the right demographic.
And Scherz offers the following portrait of Dr. Berwick as seen through the eyes of practicing physicians:
We see him as a White House Rose Garden, photo-op doctor with a borrowed white coat … who analyzes numbers and reports and theories about populations but is now totally out of touch with his former peers and the patients that they treat every day.
This, in the end, is the real problem with government-run health care. The people who make the decisions that profoundly affect peoples lives don’t have to get their hands dirty. They relax in their ivory towers and decide whether you live or die with the same level of angst they feel about what to order for lunch.
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