Don Berwick, the controversial head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, will step down from his post next month. Berwick, who was never approved by the United States Senate, gained his post via a recess appointment by President Barack Obama in July 2010.
The following statement from Benjamin Domenech, research fellow for health care policy at The Heartland Institute – a free-market think tank – may be used for attribution. For more comments, refer to the contact information below. To see Domenech’s extensive coverage of the Berwick tenure – including Heartland’s exclusive video of Berwick’s controversial statements about health care and the redistribution of wealth – visit DonBerwick.com.
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“Don Berwick’s tenure as the head of CMS was thankfully brief because of the engaged reaction of American citizens to his extreme views in favor of government rationing and wealth redistribution. Berwick provides a wonderful example of what happens when things said among polite technocrats make their way into the public domain to be weighed and measured by the American people.
“Having failed to transform America’s health care system into the British model he so adores, Berwick leaves behind a Medicare and Medicaid system whose path to collapse has been accelerated by President Obama’s policies, a system in desperate need of true reform that empowers consumers. Such reform is possible only under leadership that puts doctors and patients in the driver seat, and gets the burdensome mandates of government out of the way.”
Benjamin Domenech
Research Fellow, The Heartland Institute
Managing Editor, Health Care News
[email protected]
703/509-1741
The Heartland Institute is a 27-year-old national nonprofit organization with offices in Chicago, Illinois; Washington, DC; Austin, Texas; Tallahassee, Florida; and Columbus, Ohio. Its mission is to discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems. For more information, visit our Web site or call 312/377-4000.