Top Health Reform Player Berwick's Overhaul Vision Draws Praise, Rebuke

[cbayer]

This is a great interview with Don Berwick. If you are not familiar with him, you may want to start paying attention. He appointment was made while Congress was in recess (a total coup by the Obama administration) and there is a very high likelihood that the Republicans will try to get rid of him at the end of this session. That would be a tragedy, particularly now that the Super committee will be looking at Medicare. I am hopeful that liberals and progressives will begin to do whatever they can to make sure that Dr. Berwick stays in place.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/health/july-dec11/berwick_08-11.html

Excerpts from the interview:


As head of Medicare and Medicaid, he's in charge of the health care of over one in three Americans. Equally important, he's a key person charged with implementing the federal health care reform law. A Harvard-trained pediatrician and reformer, Berwick has spent the past 30 years analyzing the American health care system. And he doesn't like what he sees.

-snip-


"We have to get health care costs under control. I mean, nobody disagrees with that premise anymore.

But there are two ways to do that. The simple way, the easy way, the wrong way is just to cut stuff, withhold benefits, take things away from people, even cut some people out of care. That's seductive because it's so quick and it sounds kind of easy and, well, why wouldn't you do that?

But there's a better way. There's another way. I have for 30 years, my entire professional career, worked on the other way to do it, which is improve, improve."