I warned and warned—here at SHS, on radio talk shows, in speeches—that the real dirty work of Obamacare would be done quietly, behind the scenes, by an army of faceless bureaucrats who will be directed to add the devil in the details of the bill. Moreover, I prophesied, the bad bill’s 2700 pages would balloon into a grotesque tens of thousands of pages of govermentese gobbledygook—beneath the public radar and beyond the people’s comprehension.
In a related, more recent post, I highlighted the sighing love for the NHS and NICE expressed by Dr. Donald Berwick, the president’s nominee to head the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services. This is the kind of person who will control the bureaucratic process—and that means rationing, baby!
Now, a good commentary by Dr. Scott Gotlieb over at Politico puts these two themes together—and reveals, chillingly, how an army of battle hardened bureaucrats is being transferred out of the CMS to write a library full of Obamacare rules that will cause Dr. Gotlieb’s leftist heart to flutter. From the column:
Inside Washington, attention is turning to the Obama Administration’s nominee to run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Dr. Donald Berwick. The pediatrician and head of Harvard’s Institute for Health care Improvement has made frequent and sometimes colorful statements in both print and public speeches citing virtues of the British National Health Service and its arm for cost-based rationing of drugs and medical devices, the National Institute for Clinical Excellence. In an environment where the administration’s critics fear that the multitude of new commissions and bodies embedded in the Obama health plan will lead to similar kinds of government rationing, Berwick’s quotes observing advantages in these approaches are going viral.
Which was precisely why I focused on him here. And now to the attack of the bureaucrats:
There has been an exodus of many of the more experienced (and capable) staff – in some cases out of CMS entirely, but in most cases into the new work groups that are being formed to write the regulations implementing the new health plan...As for Dr. Berwick, his views are no different than any nominee this administration would have put forward. They are also widely shared in the administration — especially among the unelected appointees inside HHS who are calling significant shots on the regulations that implement the Obama plan.
Obamacare might be law—for now—but we can still stop the regulations. We need to elect a LOT of anti Obamacare House Members and Senators in November to defund the bureaucratic attack. After that, onto: Repeal. Replace. Reform
