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In 2013, the American people learned what whoppers the key promises of ObamaCare turned out to be. But the biggest whopper about the Affordable Care Act is yet to be exposed: the tightening grip the federal government will have over your doctor — even if you’re paying with private insurance. Section 1311(h)(1)(B) of the health law gives the secretary of Health and Human Services blanket authority to dictate how doctors treat patients. Not just patients in government programs like Medicare and Medicaid, but patients with private plans they pay for themselves. On Dec. 2, 2013, we learned from the Federal...

ObamaCare: Some Democrats are signing on to bills repealing the powers of the Independent Payment Advisory Board to effectively ration health care for seniors. So Sarah Palin was right about those death panels after all? Palin was mocked by liberals when at a Tea Party rally in Reno, Nev., in late 2010, shortly before the GOP retook the House of Representatives, she told attendees: "Don't be thinking that we've got victory for America in the bag yet. ... We can't party like it's 1773." Leftist know-it-alls insisted that 1776 was the correct year, when in fact Palin was right: The...

A proposed federal health insurance regulation set to take effect next year requires insurers to provide consumers with explanatory summaries of their plans, but the insurance industry contends this could be costly to enrollees, and offer little benefit. The new rule – part of the $1 trillion Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare – was announced Wednesday by Donald Berwick, President Obama's recess appointee to be director of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Berwick has never been confirmed or subjected to a confirmation hearing by a Democrat-controlled Senate.

The U.S. Justice Department entered the court battle over a tough new Indiana abortion law that disqualifies Planned Parenthood of Indiana from the Medicaid program, siding with the organization in its request Thursday for a court order blocking the statute as unconstitutional. In a brief filed electronically after the close of business, Justice Department attorneys said U.S. District Judge Tanya Walton Pratt should grant Planned Parenthood's request for an injunction because it blocks Medicaid recipients' freedom to choose the provider of their choice. The law signed May 10 by Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels cuts off Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood...

Sometimes the biggest victories are the ones that make the least noise. Lost amid all the excitement over the Rio trip, the anti-obesity campaign, and the March Madness picks was the revelation that Senate Democrats had given up any attempt to confirm Donald Berwick as chief of Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). It seems that 42 Republicans had informed the Democratic majority by letter that they would vote for Berwick's confirmation when Hell froze over. (With Wisconsin, that makes two examples of Republicans acting as if they had spines in one month. Will wonders never cease?) Berwick was...

Senate Democrats Abandon Obama Rationing Czar Donald Berwick Washington, DC -- Senate Democrats have officially given up their fight to confirm Donald Berwick, the rationing advocate President Barack Obama nominated to become the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the chief of implementation of the Obamacare law. http://www.lifenews.com/2011/03/05/senate-democrats-abandon-obama-rationing-czar-donald-berwick/

According to Politico , President Obama will be forced to abandon his controversial nomination of Donald Berwick as the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Politico reports that “Senate Democrats have given up on confirming Don Berwick as CMS administrator in the wake of a letter from 42 Republican senators opposing the nomination,” as “there's no way for Berwick to get the 60 votes needed to clear the Senate.” As with his various “czars,” President Obama had previously circumvented the Senate confirmation process (despite having a Democratically controlled Senate) to install Berwick in his post....

Reform: As the head of Medicaid and Medicare services testifies in favor of ObamaCare, the CBO director says it will destroy 800,000 jobs. Talk about killing two birds with one stone. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi once famously said that we'd have to pass ObamaCare to see what was in it. She also boasted that the health care bill would create 4 million jobs — "400,000 of them almost immediately." Now that we've seen what's in it, we realize the possible consequences for our physical and economic health. And congressional testimony before GOP-led committees has given us fresh reasons for...

[Note: This is not a duplicate of http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2664090/posts as this thread is from a different source and contains information not in the other thread.] President Obama renominated Donald Berwick yesterday as administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a pivotal position in implementing the president’s health care law. Using a recess appointment, Obama had placed Berwick, a Harvard professor and Boston pediatrician noted for his studies on improving health care without raising costs, into his post on July 7 after the Senate would not confirm him. Some Republicans contended Berwick’s positions could lead to care rationing; others hinted...

Buried in the mass of directives issued by the new head of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services was a little ol' regulation putting the government in the business of end-of-life consultations. Or what Sarah Palin in one of her unseemly flights of candor referred to as "death panels." But as soon as this regulation came to light, and the public reacted, not at all favorably, it was the regulation whose end had to be hastened. It's not just that the new provision was issued without the approval of Congress -- indeed, Congress refused to pass it after strenuous...

President Barack Obama’s Medicare chief, rationing advocate Donald Berwick, says he is happy with ObamaCare in terms of how it redistributes wealth similar to the British health care system.Berwick is the man Obama appointed to implement ObamaCare and head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.He recently claimed he has backed away from some of his pro-rationing positions, but CNS News caught up with him at speech he delivered Friday at a conference sponsored by the National Committee for Quality Assurance.“Do you think the new health care law–President Obama’s health care law–does enough and a sufficient job to redistribute...

First they did away with house calls, now Donald Berwick wants to dramatically restrict office calls. Or at least, that’s what the temporary (recess appointment) Medicare chief and rationing proponent advocated in a document he wrote and published before entering government while the head of the Institute for Health Care Improvement.In Escape Fire: Lessons for the Future of Health Care, Berwick makes a breathtaking proposal that would seem to guarantee each of us all the health care we want, whenever we want to receive it .  From page 42: The new system of access can be summarized in one...

CNS News‘ Matt Cover went to the Capitol in hopes of getting answers from Donald Berwick, Obama’s controversial and highly evasive recess appointment to administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services. Berwick has yet to answer questions or hold a hearing – until yesterday. Cover writes: The hearing attended by Berwick, who received a recess appointment from President Barack Obama and thus bypassed the normal Senate confirmation process, was the first in which he was called upon to answer questions from senators since he assumed his post at CMS in July. After the hearing, CNSNews.com tried to ask...

Donald Berwick, the would be health care rationier brought in by an opaque-purposed recess appointment to avoid having to answer pointed questions at a senate hearing, has recently been very enthusiastic in his praise of NICE–the NHS rationing board that uses the the quality adjusted life year (QALY) in making its decisions.  From an interview he gave to Biotechnology Health Care in 2009: The United States is not the only country struggling with healthcare costs. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) in the United Kingdom and also, to some extent, the Institut National de La Sante...

Jason Mattera of Human Events confronted Obama’s controversial recess appointee Donald Berwick posing questions that he’d rather not have to answer. Berwick was chosen to head Medicare without questioning while Congress was out of session. As for a little background into Obama’s Medicare Czar, in 2008 while speaking to an audience in the UK on the topic of health care, he said “Any health care funding plan that is just, equitable, civilized and humane must redistribute wealth from the richer among us to the poorer and the less fortunate. Excellent health care is by definition redistributional.” He also has said...

It is very clear that the Obama Administration knows its approach to health care is unpopular.  Thus, the short term Medicare head, Donald Berwick–who Obama gave a recess appointment to so he wouldn’t have to testify in a Senate Committee about his rationing views–pretended that we can expand coverage, while not raising prices and not cutting care in a speech yesterday.  What a joke.  From the Associated Press story: The nation’s health system can’t be transformed by rationing medical care, President Barack Obama‘s new Medicare chief said Monday in his first major speech.  Dr. Donald Berwick’s appointment earlier this summer without Senate...

Medicine: After the recess appointment of a Medicare and Medicaid head, an FDA panel drops its endorsement of a widely used cancer drug. Another FDA-approved cancer therapy may not be paid for. It begins. It didn't take long for the health care philosophy of Dr. Donald Berwick, President Obama's choice to head the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services, and an appointee we have labeled a "one-man death panel," to have an effect. Berwick is an admirer of Britain's National Health Service and its National Institute for Clinical Excellence, with the Orwellian-acronym NICE. "NICE," Berwick has said, "is extremely effective...

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- Senator Charles Grassley, a pro-life Iowa Republican, has sent a letter to Donald Berwick, the rationing advocate who President Barack Obama appointed to become the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, asking him about his lifetime health care.Republican members of the Senate, who did not get a chance to hold a hearing or vote on Berwick thanks to the recess appointment, are concerned about Berwick's ties to the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. The nonprofit organization received $12.2 million in contributions and grants in 2008, the Examiner indicates, and Berwick received $2.3 million that...

THE BRIEFING ROOM • THE BLOG THE BLOG TUESDAY, AUGUST 4TH, 2009 AT 6:55 AM Facts Are Stubborn Things Posted by Macon Phillips Opponents of health insurance reform may find the truth a little inconvenient, but as our second president famously said, "facts are stubborn things." Scary chain emails and videos are starting to percolate on the internet, breathlessly claiming, for example, to "uncover" the truth about the President’s health insurance reform positions. In this video, Linda Douglass, the communications director for the White House’s Health Reform Office, addresses one example that makes it look like the President intends to...

President Obama, without fanfare, submitted Donald Berwick's name to the U.S. Senate Monday for confirmation as the top Medicare and Medicaid administrator. Obama had sidestepped the confirmation process two weeks ago when he appointed Berwick while the Senate was on recess for the July Fourth holiday. That bristled Senate Republicans. Obama issued no statement with Monday's announcement on the White House Web site that Berwick's nomination as administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services had been submitted along with several others. Even without Senate approval Berwick can stay in the post through 2011.