Research Briefing

Obama's Pick To Head Centers For Medicare & Medicaid Services Offers Wrong Prescription For America's Health Care System

Donald Berwick's Nomination To Head CMS Would Make Him "Second Only" To HHS Secretary "In Terms Of Influence Within The Department Over Implementing" Obamacare. "Obama tapped Berwick to serve as administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services -- a post second only to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius in terms of influence within the department over implementing the massive new health care law." (Carrie Budoff Brown, "GOP Aims To Revive Health Care Debate," Politico, 6/1/10)

OBAMA INSISTED "NOBODY IS TALKING ABOUT" FOLLOWING

MODEL OF "GREAT BRITAIN ... SYSTEM OF SOCIALIZED MEDICINE"

Obama Said "Great Britain Has A System Of Socialized Medicine" And "Nobody Is Talking About Doing That" In The US. "You hear that all the time, 'socialized medicine.' Well, socialized medicine would mean that the government would basically run all of health care. They would hire the doctors, they would run the hospitals. They would just run the whole thing. Great Britain has a system of socialized medicine. Nobody is talking about doing that, all right? So when you hear people saying, 'socialized medicine,' understand I don't know anybody in Washington who is proposing that, certainly not me." (President Barack Obama, Remarks By The President In Town Hall Meeting On Health Care Reform, Green Bay, WI, 6/11/09)

BUT THAT IS EXACTLY THE MODEL DONALD BERWICK "FELL IN LOVE WITH"

Berwick Says He "Fell In Love With" Britain's National Health Service (NHS). "'I fell in love with the NHS,' Berwick said in a 2008 speech of the system that he worked on since the 1990s." (Carrie Budoff Brown, "GOP Aims To Revive Health Care Debate," Politico, 6/1/10)

• Berwick: "The NHS Is One Of The Great Human Health Care Endeavors On Earth." (Carrie Budoff Brown, "GOP Aims To Revive Health Care Debate," Politico, 6/1/10)
  
  
• Berwick: "To An American Observer, The NHS Is Such A Seductress." (Carrie Budoff Brown, "GOP Aims To Revive Health Care Debate," Politico, 6/1/10)
  
  
• Berwick: "It Can Be An Example For The Whole World -- An Example, I Must Say, That The United States Needs Now More Than Most Other Countries Do." (Carrie Budoff Brown, "GOP Aims To Revive Health Care Debate," Politico, 6/1/10)

When Discussing Comparative Effectiveness Research, Berwick Praised Britain's National Institute For Health And Clinical Excellence (NICE). Q: "Are we on the right track with a federal CER agency?" Berwick: "The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) in the United Kingdom and also, to some extent, the Institut National de La Sante in France have developed very good and very disciplined, scientifically grounded, policy- connected models for the evaluation of medical treatments from which we ought to learn. ... These organizations have created benchmarks of best practices that we could learn from and adapt in this country." (Rethinking Comparative Effectiveness Research," Biotechnology Healthcare, 6/09)

• Berwick Agrees That NICE Is "A Bogeyman" In The US, But Also Calls It "Extremely Effective... Conscientious, Valuable." "I know that, and it's a misunderstanding of the deepest sort. NICE is extremely effective and a conscientious, valuable, and -- importantly -- knowledge-building system. The fact that it's a bogeyman in this country is a political fact, not a technical one." (Katherine T. Adams, "An Interview With Dr. Donald Berwick: Rethinking Comparative Effectiveness Research," Biotechnology Healthcare, 6/09)
• Berwick Calls It "Irrational" To Ignore Costs In Comparative Effectiveness Research And Not Use It For Rationing. "You can say, 'Well, we shouldn't even look.' But that would be irrational. The social budget is limited -- we have a limited resource pool. It makes terribly good sense to at least know the price of an added benefit, and at some point we might say nationally, regionally, or locally that we wish we could afford it, but we can't. We have to be realistic about the knowledge base." (Katherine T. Adams, "An Interview With Dr. Donald Berwick: Rethinking Comparative Effectiveness Research," Biotechnology Healthcare, 6/09)