Our President, having correctly concluded that Donald Berwick would never be confirmed by the Senate as Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, shoved him down our throats with a recess appointment.
But the “news” media tell us not to worry because that all this talk about Berwick’s anti-market, statist ideology is just the GOP noise machine. Well, in this video, he sounds pretty anti-market to me. Judge for yourself:
[ht Health Care News]
Comments 6
This comes from a talk two years on the NHS’s 60th birthday. I don’t understand why in any case you’d expect someone tasked with running a federal program to instead junk it for the ‘free market’, whatever that is. You yourself are on record as saying you would not disband Medicare.
Posted 08 Jul 2010 at 10:55 am ¶It would appear that the free market is where the good doctor cleans up while making speeches about “the darkness of private enterprise.”
Another “progressive” hypocrite. How unusual!
Posted 08 Jul 2010 at 3:07 pm ¶He’s left the IHI and it is not a private firm so he has no conflict on investments. I’ll agree that his salary and those of others looked on the high side but if the IHI was providing great value I’m sure you’d be the first to say he should have been well rewarded. And as I’ve said before the compensation packages for American healthcare bosses is way higher than in Europe which obviously adds to your very high costs.
Posted 09 Jul 2010 at 8:05 am ¶Silly statement Marc. Take the McGuire item a few years ago with UHG. The estimates were that he was taking $1bn in stock sales. Let’s say he took 1bn from the company and not the market. That would have an impact on the capitalization in UHG of .16%. I don’t think a one time reduction of .16% is really even a blip on the radar of health care costs, and that is the most egregious example I know of taken to the extreme.
Posted 09 Jul 2010 at 4:01 pm ¶Matt, the IHI is an independent nonprofit agency - there is no stock. It employs 110 people and receives grants and fees for its work. It is not a large organisation. I also see that the large sum Berwick and others ‘received’ in the last year was actually mostly the way seven years’ pension monies are rolled up and reported.
Posted 10 Jul 2010 at 4:45 am ¶I was merely pointing out that you were wrong on the executive salaries adding in any significant way to the cost of healthcare in the US.
Posted 12 Jul 2010 at 9:00 am ¶Post a Comment