Does Berwick *really* sound like a radical commie?
While people continue to demonize CMS Administrator Dr. Donald Berwick and President Obama essentially throws Berwick under the political bus, far too many are missing the message. Wouldn’t “radical communist thugs” like one commenter on this YouTube page labeled the Obama administration really want to dehumanize patient care?
Watch this short video of Berwick speaking in Berlin in 2009 (yes, socialist Europe). He talks about how patient care already has been dehumanized and how healthcare professionals and organizations routinely ignore the wishes of patients. Speaking of a friend who couldn’t get mammogram results over the phone, Berwick said, “Their choice trumps her choice. Period. And that’s what scares me. It scares me to be made helpless before my time, to be made ignorant when I want to know, to be made to sit when I wish to stand, or to be alone when I need to hold my wife’s hand, or to eat what I do not wish to eat, or to be named what I do not wish to be named, or to be told when I wish to be asked, or to be awoken when I wish to sleep.”
Does that sound like a “radical communist thug” or someone genuinely committed to improving the quality of care and actually humanizing the patient experience?
Neil,
Just like Michelle Bachmann accusing President Obama of wanting to bankrupt Medicare to replace it with Obamacare. In other words, she is accusing him of wanting to replace a single-payer system (socialism) with one of subsidized insurance.
See:
http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-chait/90245/bachmann-obama-hates-socialism
Bill
Berwick sounds like someone who a) is about to retire into a system he has had a major role in building, and knows what to expect, and 2) has made a career of knowing how to say the right thing at the right time in order to self-promote, regardless of the truth, wisdom or value of his sayings.
Berwick has a long history of paying lip service to the human needs of patients, physicians and nurses, and subsequently turning around and promoting/authorizing/mandating via regulation systems which do exactly what he says shouldn’t be done. He’s a classic political hypocrite.