Berwick: Ryan Plan is Real Rationing

Politico reports:

The man Republicans have derided as the “rationer-in-chief” charges that Republicans’ own budget proposals would end up rationing care to millions of Americans on Medicare and Medicaid.

“It is paradoxical really that with all this talk of rationing, the proposal we hear about how to fix American health care is to take it away from people. That’s from the very people who are crying rationing, ” Don Berwick, the administrator of CMS, said in a wide-ranging interview with Politico. “If you look at the proposed withdrawals of support to Medicare beneficiaries and Medicaid, it’s withholding care from the people who need the care. You tell me what that is?”

Berwick has faced intense criticism from congressional Republicans over previous statements he’s made in support of the British health care system, which accusers say “rations” health care. Last month, 42 Senate Republicans asked President Barack Obama to withdraw Berwick’s nomination, indicating it would be difficult to get 60 votes to support his nomination. Berwick refused to answer questions about his nomination, with his spokesman referring questions about the nomination process to the Senate. If no action is taken, Berwick’s recess appointment expires at the end of this year.

In the interim, he’s responsible for an agency that Obama has entrusted with implementing the health care overhaul while saving millions in federal dollars. Obama’s budget proposal calls for $480 billion in savings from Medicare and Medicaid through 2023 and an additional $1 trillion in savings in the following decade.

Berwick, a pediatrician, said those savings should not come from limiting or denying care — even if it is expensive — but rather from improving care so that waste, fraud and medical mistakes are eliminated.

“When I started taking care of kids at the beginning of my career, every leukemic child died. … Now they all live. That costs some money,” he said, listing an expensive array of required treatments. “We shouldn’t give that up as a country. We need to make care better by adding the stuff that really does help.”

Without naming the plan, Berwick argued that Rep. Paul Ryan’s Republican budget proposal, which includes issuing state block grants for Medicaid and “premium support” vouchers for Medicare coverage after 2022, would deny such care.

“When I read proposals for reform that say, ‘Sorry kid, you’re on your own,’ that’s the not the country I want to be in,” he said. “And I don’t think that’s the country the public wants to be in.”