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Obama bypassing Senate for new Medicare Chief

Faster horses

Well-known member
WASHINGTON – 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. The appointment was expected Wednesday.

The decision means Berwick, an expert on patient care, can assume the post without being confirmed by the Senate, which is in recess for the July Fourth holiday. He could serve through next year without Senate confirmation.

Republicans had indicated they were prepared to oppose him over comments he had made on rationing of medical care and other matters. Democrats wanted to avoid a nasty confirmation fight that could reopen the health care debate. Berwick was nominated in April but no confirmation hearing had been scheduled.

"Many Republicans in Congress have made it clear in recent weeks that they were going to stall the nomination as long as they could, solely to score political points," White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer wrote in a post on the White House blog. "But with the agency facing new responsibilities to protect seniors' care under the Affordable Care Act, there's no time to waste with Washington game-playing."

The decision to use a recess appointment to skirt the Senate drew fire from Republicans even though the tool had been used frequently by presidents of both political parties. Obama last made a batch of recess appointments in March, and he was to make two other less prominent appointments Wednesday, one to a pension board and the other to a science post, the White House said.

"This recess appointment is an insult to the American people," Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., said in a statement. "Dr. Berwick is a self-professed supporter of rationing health care and he won't even have to explain his views to the American people in a congressional hearing."

The Senate Republican leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said, "The fact that this administration won't allow the man charged with implementing the president's plan to cut $500 billion out of Medicare to testify about his plans for the care of our nation's seniors is truly outrageous."

Berwick, 63, is a pediatrician, Harvard University professor and leader of a health care nonprofit organization who's drawn support from many quarters, including the American Medical Association, since his nomination to oversee the enormous Medicare and Medicaid health insurance plans for the elderly, poor and disabled.

He's been criticized by Republicans for a number of comments, including telling an interviewer last year: "The decision is not whether or not we will ration care — the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open. And right now, we are doing it blindly."

Republicans have seized on that to cast Berwick as someone who would deny needed care based on cost, while supporters contend rationing already is done by insurance companies and Berwick simply wants transparency and accountability in medical decisions.

It's just those echoes of last year's acrimonious health care debate that Democrats would prefer not to replay on the Senate floor.

Medicare has been without an administrator since 2006, and the White House says the need to fill the post is critical because of its role in implementing the new health care law. Medicare is to be a key testing ground for numerous aspects of the new law, from developing new medical techniques to trying out new payment systems, and the White House says a permanent leader is key with deadlines approaching.

In addition to his professorship at Harvard, Berwick is the president of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, a nonprofit in Cambridge, Mass., that works to develop and implement concepts for improving patient care.

Also being appointed Wednesday are:

_Philip E. Coyle III as associate director for national security and international affairs at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
 

hypocritexposer

Well-known member
The decision means Berwick, an expert on patient care

A few of his credentials are honorary.

But Dr. Berwick hasn't seen a patient in years. And the two Harvard professor positions listed on his White House biography as well as another position as a senior scientist at the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston are essentially "honorary professorships," which require two or three seminars or meetings a year, The Washington Times has learned.
 

hypocritexposer

Well-known member
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- The reaction from pro-life advocates against the recess appointment of rationing advocate Donald Berwick to head up Medicare and Medicaid has been strong. They are very concerned Berwick, named to the post by Obama today after no hearings in the Senate, will promote rationing.

"Donald Berwick is a one-man death panel," said David N. O'Steen, director of National Right to Life.

"While Americans may not remember the agency he heads, he will quickly become known as Obama's rationing czar," he told LifeNews.com

Burke Balch, an attorney who is the director of medical ethics for the National Right to Life Committee, also chimed in on the appointment.

“The Obama recess appointment of rationing advocate Donald Berwick to head the key government agency that will apply the new health care law is disastrous news for the vulnerable, especially the elderly and the sickest of American patients,” he said.

He said Obama's recess appointment is "an attempt to avoid examination, through the pending confirmation process, of Berwick's well-documented support for rationing health care."

Confirmation of Berwick would have faced strong opposition from pro-life Republican senators appalled by his open advocacy of government-imposed rationing of medical treatment, the organization said.

FRC Action Senior Vice President Tom McClusky also said his group is opposed to Obama's appointment.

"Berwick is another example of President Obama's extreme liberal agenda, and only the latest in President Obama's numerous missteps related to health care in America," he said. "Berwick has stated himself that England's socialized medical services are better than those in the United States."

"Americans should keep their eyes open to guard their health from Donald Berwick's extreme view of medicine. He will only bring America's high standards for health care services down, and hurt Americans through rationing and lower standards of medical treatment," McClusky added.

In a June 2009 interview with the journal Biotechnology Healthcare, Berwick said, “The decision is not whether or not we will ration care – the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open.”
In an article in the May/June 2008 issue of Health Affairs, he called for “rational collective action overriding some individual self-interest” so as to “reduce per capita costs.” Lamenting that “[t]oday’s individual health care processes are designed to respond to the acute needs of individual patients,” Berwick wrote that instead government should “approach new technologies and capital investments with skepticism and require that a strong burden of proof of value lie with the proponent.”

Berwick’s advocacy of the decimation of American health care is long-standing. In a 1994 Journal of the American Medical Association article, he wrote, “Most metropolitan areas in the United States should reduce the number of centers engaging in cardiac surgery, high-risk obstetrics, neonatal intensive care, organ transplantation, tertiary cancer care, high-level trauma care, and high-technology imaging.”

Berwick is also an enthusiastic supporter of Britain’s National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE), the agency charged with determining which medical advances will – and which will not – be made available to the British public.

Berwick claims NICE has “developed very good and very disciplined . . . models for the evaluation of medical treatment from which we ought to learn.” England’s five-year cancer survival rate for men is only 45%, compared with 66% in the U.S. That for women is 53%, compared to 63% in the U.S.


The difference can in large measure be attributed to the refusal of NICE to authorized British use of pioneering cancer drugs routinely available in the United States. That is to say – currently routinely available in the United States – an availability Berwick will soon be using the power of government to curtail.

"President Obama's appointment of this open advocate of rationing to implement his health care law underlines the need for repeal before untold numbers of vulnerable Americans suffer death from denial of life-saving treatment," O'Steen added. "The Obama health care rationing law much be repealed and voters need to remember its deadly provisions in November."
 
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Anonymous

Guest
So what is so startling and new.. :???: When you have the party of "NO"- that only wants to play partisan politics- and not allow the person elected by the majority of the voters in the country to appoint the people he wants to lead theDepartments and Agencies :???:

You seem to forget that that same party of " NO"- had control of the Congress for 12 years- and freerun from 2000 to 2006 controlling not only Congress but the Whitehouse-- but screwed it up so bad we had an arsekicking housecleaning in 06- and continued change in 08- after we saw how those folks lead us into the Bush Bust....

Time to let some new administrative leaders have a run- as they sure can't do any worse than the Bush Bunch :roll: :wink: :lol:

Presidents since George Washingtonhave made recess appointments. Washington appointed South Carolina judge John Rutledge as Chief Justice of the United Statesduring a congressionalrecess in 1795. Because of Rutledge's political views and occasional mental illness, however, the Senate rejected his nomination, and Rutledge subsequently attempted suicide and then resigned. New Jersey judge William J. Brennan was appointed to the Supreme Court by President Dwight D. Eisenhowerin 1956 through ar ecess appointment. This was done in part with an eye on the presidential campaign that year; Eisenhower was running for reelection, and his advisors thought it would be politically advantageous to place a northeastern Catholicon the court. Brennan was promptly confirmed when the Senate came back into session. Eisenhower made two otherrecess appointments.

President George W.Bushappointed two judges during Senaterecesses, William Pryor and Charles Pickering to U.S. courts of appeals after their nominations were filibusteredby Senate Democrats. Judge Pickering, whoBush appointed to the Fifth Circuit, withdrew his name from consideration for renomination and retired when hisrecess appointment expired. Judge Pryor was subsequently confirmed by the Senate for a lifetime appointment to the Eleventh Circuit.

In two terms,Bush made 171recess appointments.
On August 1, 2005,Bush made arecess appointment of John Bolton, to serve as U.S. representative to the United Nations. Bolton had also been the subject of a Senate filibuster. The filibuster concerned documents that the White House refused to release, which Democrats suggested may contain proof of Bolton's abusive treatment and coercion of staff members or of his improper use of National Security Agency communications intercepts regarding U.S. citizens. Having failed to win Senate confirmation, he resigned his office in December 2006 concurrently with the adjournment of the 109th Congress.[6] On April 4, 2007, during the Easterrecess of Congress,Bush announced three recess appointments. The first was Sam Fox to serve as U.S. Ambassador to Belgium. Fox's appointment had been thwarted in Congress because he had donated $50,000 to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth during the 2004 presidential campaign, a group whose advertisements many Democrats blamed for John Kerry's loss. The second appointment announced that day was Susan Dudley to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) at the Office of Management and Budget. The thirdrecess appointment on April 4 was Andrew G. Biggs to serve asDeputy Commissioner of the Social Security Administration. Biggs was investigated by Senate Democrats in 2005, while serving as Assistant Commissioner for the Social Security Administration, concerning whether he violated a federal ban on congressional lobbying by federal employees when he edited the prepared testimony for a lobbyist appearing before a Democratic Policy Committee Social Security hearing as alleged by John Stanton in Congress Daily.
 

hypocritexposer

Well-known member
This guy won't have any impact on what Bush did, but he may have an impact on the level of health Care you receive.

So find excuses for your chosen one, as much as you like.

why do you continue to compare obama to the "worst president ever"?
 
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Anonymous

Guest
hypocritexposer said:
This guy won't have any impact on what Bush did, but he may have an impact on the level of health Care you receive.

So find excuses for your chosen one, as much as you like.

why do you continue to compare obama to the "worst president ever"?

He was the last and dang sure the most memorable to compare to-- but I think I also compared Obama to the first President- that did the same thing...Nothing new- startling- or Hypocrit anti-American conspiracy riddled :roll: :wink: :p :lol:

I disagreed with the Dems partisan games when Bush came into office- and I disagree now with the Repubs partisan games with Obama...Both should have a chance to work with- and have a chance to succeed or fail with the people they think will do the best job....
 

hypocritexposer

Well-known member
Oldtimer said:
hypocritexposer said:
This guy won't have any impact on what Bush did, but he may have an impact on the level of health Care you receive.

So find excuses for your chosen one, as much as you like.

why do you continue to compare obama to the "worst president ever"?

He was the last and dang sure the most memorable to compare to-- but I think I also compared Obama to the first President- that did the same thing...Nothing new- startling- or Hypocrit anti-American conspiracy riddled :roll: :wink: :p :lol:

I disagreed with the Dems partisan games when Bush came into office- and I disagree now with the Repubs partisan games with Obama...Both should have a chance to work with- and have a chance to succeed or fail with the people they think will do the best job....

But you don't have a problem with the partisan games obama plays, do you?

How about the racism, no problem with that either? Or the lack of respect for the Rule of Law, shown by obama?
 

Steve

Well-known member
but I think I also compared Obama to the first President- that did the same thing...Nothing new

yep.. same ol... nothing new... so much for change... I can't believe liberals fell for that crap..
 
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