Obama’s Health Czar Donald Berwick and Redistribution (Updated)

From video description:

  • President Obama bypassed Congress and appointed Dr. Donald M. Berwick, a health policy expert, to run Medicare and Medicaid. (Posted by: Religio-Political Talk) In this short critique of a 2008 speech (video included) Dr. Berwick gave in Britain railing against our health system, Dennis Prager zeroes in on the Left’s fascination with “equality” and not “quality.” Not to mention that the free-market allows the most poor and disadvantaged to be helped that any other system yet. Here is a simple illustration: http://youtu.be/OI1sWq0Nakk

From a discussion on FB, I reference the above audio and say this:

Do you really think, Nick Novotny, that by edict, cost can be capped without costs being passed on to consumers elsewhere? Or, like in Canada, technology (MRIs, Cat-scans, mammograms, etc) takes a hit and fewer and fewer people can get the care they need. Just like that, a magic “government wand” and walla, costs are down and care percentages are up? Please, the naivete. As Dr. Dorin points out in his #4 of five reasons doctors do not like Obamacare:

4. The Ghost of Donald Berwick: Former Obama appointee and head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Doctor Donald Berwick, was openly in praise of the British National Health System. His admiration for socialized medicine was so great that he actively worked to fashion Obamacare into a powerful force to restrict the prescription drugs which doctors can write for you. Berwick and others utilized the concept of mini-HMOs, called ACOs, for “Accountable Care Organizations,” to begin the design of mandated electronic ordering systems that will limit the medicines which you can be given by your physician. ACOs will have almost unlimited control over the computer screen “platform” which displays ordering options for e-prescriptions. If your favorite medicine is not on the platform, good luck!

Read more: There are five reasons physicians hate Affordable Health Care | Washington Times Communities

Dinesh D’Souza has revealed in an excellent article why he is a leading culturally minded conservative commentator/author of our day. I suggest reading the whole article, but D’Souza quotes from his fathers article where he says:

“We need to eliminate power structures that have been built through excessive accumulation so that not only a few individuals shall control a vast magnitude of resources as is the case now.” The senior Obama proposed that the state confiscate private land and raise taxes with no upper limit. In fact, he insisted that “theoretically there is nothing that can stop the government from taxing 100% of income so long as the people get benefits from the government commensurate with their income which is taxed.” (page 3 of mentioned article)

This statement that may seemingly drive some of Obama’s thinking, brings to mind another statement made by his science czar, John Holdren. (Posts on Holdren at RPT, and at Blogspot [see Obama’s Czars].) Here is an impromptu attempted interview with Holdren… and take note these guys are radicals and wish to use and subvert language and definitions. So when Holdren says he was talking about using the free market to get his plans implemented, he doesn’t mean by allowing the free market to do so without coercion. His phrase in this exchange, environmental equality – is a code word for this coercion. Like Prager says, you can either have equality, or liberty, you cannot however, have them both.

The Blaze mentions that Holdrens co-authors, Paul and Anne H. Ehrlich, called for wealth redistribution (both within and among nations) “absolutely essential” in order to provide a decent life for everyone. Which makes sense of this goal quoted here:

Resources must be diverted from frivolous and wasteful uses in overdeveloped countries to filling the genuine needs of underdeveloped countries,” Holdren and his co-authors wrote. ”This effort must be largely political, especially with regard to our overexploitation of world resources, but the campaign should be strongly supplemented by legal and boycott action against polluters and others whose activities damage the environment. The need for de-development presents our economists with a major challenge. They must design a stable, low-consumption economy in which there is a much more equitable distribution of wealth than in the present one. Redistribution of wealth both within and among nations is absolutely essential, if a decent life is to be provided for every human being.

This is all providing explanations for D’Souza’s list of apparent contradictions in Obama’s actions as an AMERICAN President. I look forward to Dinesh’s book. It should provide meat for the soul and mind. By the way, if you do not know about Paul Ehrlich background and failed predictive powers, I highly suggest a book by Julian Simon entitled, Hoodwinking the Nation. An absolutely fascinating read (click the book cover for a quick intro about the bet the two men made about resources). May I finish that when a person tells you that the two parties are the same, they have no idea what they are talking about.