Freedom Line Blog

In this week’s Freedom Minute, CFIF’s Renee Giachino discusses President Obama’s recess appointment of Dr. Donald Berwick, a man who openly supports health care rationing, to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Below is one of the latest cartoons from Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

As we mentioned earlier today, Dr. Donald Berwick has received a recess appointment from President Obama to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. You’ll hear a lot in the next few days from the conservative press about Berwick’s radical affection for rationing and his distaste for the free market system. Lest you think any of it hyperbolic, let the man tell you for himself:

The Associated Press reports:

Bypassing Republicans eager to grill an administration official over the new health care law, President Barack Obama is planning to appoint the head of Medicare and Medicaid without Senate hearings.

“Obama intends to use a so-called recess appointment to put Dr. Donald Berwick in charge of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a White House official said Tuesday night.”

As Freedom Line readers are aware, Dr. Berwick is a self-proclaimed health care rationing enthusiast who openly supports wealth redistribution schemes and a completely government-run single payer health care system. 

Indeed, in an interview just last year Berwick said, “The decision is not whether or not we will ration care — the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open.”  And in 2002, Dr. Berwick wrote, “most people who have serious pain do not need advanced methods – they just need the morphine and counseling that have been available for centuries.”

Seniors beware.  This is the guy who is now in charge of your health care.