Even Worse on Health

Obama has done a terrible job attempting / failing / pretending to reform the U.S. health entitlement system. Now he's put the worst man possible in a key job. Michael Tanner from the Cato Institute has the rundown:

Obama’s pick, Dr. Donald Berwick, is an outspoken admirer of the British National Health Service and its rationing arm, the National Institute for Clinical Effectiveness (NICE)...

The one thing the NHS is good at is saving money. After all, it is far cheaper to let the sick die than to provide care. At the forefront of this cost-based rationing is NICE... With the creation of NICE, the U.K. government has effectively put a dollar amount to how much a citizen’s life is worth. To be exact, each year of added life is worth approximately $44,305 (£30,000)...

To Dr. Berwick , this is exactly how it should be. “NICE is not just a national treasure,” he says, “it is a global treasure.”

I can stomach someone who believes that NICE is a necessary evil, or part of a larger scheme working for the good. But to consider "a treasure" a body whose core work is to remove the power of life and death from doctors and patients and give it to bureaucrats... scary!

See earlier post for more on NICE and its prescient double in literature.