The Illegitimate President nominated a certain enthusiastic marxist named Dr. Donald Berwick to be czar over rationing of health care in America. Berwick despises the free market, which means he utterly abhors the idea that people should choose what is best for themselves and their situation, and believes that only government regulators should decide which treatments are available, and who should receive care.
Berwick explained that there are three steps to “comparative effectiveness research.” The first is to determine whether a therapy works or not. The second is to determine how well the therapy works compared to other therapies. The third is to do a cost-benefit analysis.
“If a new drug or procedure is effective, and has some advantage over existing alternatives,” Berwick said, “then does the incremental benefit justify the likely additional cost?”
Now, in a free country where people freely chose to pay for their own health care with their own money, this is a good question for any prudent consumer. It is exactly that “free market force” that Berwick implored the British socialists not to put their faith in.
But in a country where the government has taken regulatory and fiscal control of the health care system—where the state is subsidizing most people’s care—and where government bureaucrats make the decisions about who gets what treatment, this question is not the animating moving force behind the invisible hand of the market, it is the dark materialistic spirit behind the iron hand of a life-and-death tyranny.
Berwick went on to say, “any health care funding plan that is just must redistribute wealth.” Meaning, of course, the wealth must be redistributed to the government which pays for the care. You and I will be taxed into poverty, with the hope that this will make us more reliant and subservient to our bureaucratic overlords.
via CNSNews.com – Obama Names Rationing Czar to Run Medicare.
