Donald Berwick, the Harvard windbag Obama just installed as Adminstrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, may not be an outright crook. He does, however, have conflicts of interest that render him unsuitable for the CMS post to which he has been appointed.
Robert Goldberg reports in the American Spectator that, during his tenure as president and CEO of the nonprofit Institute of Healthcare Improvement (IHI) Berwick made millions working with for-profit firms that now stand to make huge profits off Obamacare:
[IHI] receives about $40 million each year from a combination of grants, fees and consulting contracts from managed care companies, major academic medical centers, hospitals and health care foundations.
Very interesting.
Many of these organizations such as Kaiser Permanente, Blue Cross Blue Shield, and the Josiah Macy Foundation are already participating or seeking to influence boards and panels established by Obamacare.
And there’s more:
IHI receives nearly $ 2 million a year in federal grants. These grants appear to be awarded by the Department of Health and Human Services. Will Berwick recuse himself from grant-making decisions pertaining to IHI?
This is why Obama resorted to a recess appointment to install Berwick in his powerful CMS job. As Goldberg points out, Berwick is pretty smooth. He could have handled questions about his controversial statements concerning rationing and redistribution of wealth.
These obvious conflicts of interest would have been considerably more difficult to explain.
Comments 1
So happy to see someone actually reporting the TRUTH. I find it odd that every ‘legitimate’ news source is simply bypassing this important information. IHI is a nonprofit arm of the banking and insurance industry corporations. It represents their interests. The ‘improvements’ that are touted as innovative are all based on Juran health care metrics from the 1990’s, repackaged and presented via a digital format. Magic, oh boy. Smoke and mirrors.
Berwick’s appointment is in line with the hostile takeover of medicine by the insurance industry. It is a non-partisan issue,because it was inconsequential who was in the White House, it was time to move Berwick into position. This appointment was just one more step towards the goal of complete control of the profits from the medical industry by the banking industry. I wish you would also report on the Medicine Bank initiative. Ben Berwick, Don’s son, worked closely with Dodd on this deal.
It is an unbelievable plan on behalf of the banks to restructure and control even more facets of the healthcare environment, and once again,significantly under-reported. Please keep reporting the truth.
Posted 12 Jul 2010 at 3:40 pm ¶Post a Comment