Donald Berwick, recess-appointed by President Obama to head Medicare and Medicaid, is a well-known advocate of health care rationing and admirer of Britain’s National Health Service. Rising health costs and limited resources “require decisions about who will have access to care and the extent of their coverage,” Berwick wrote in 1999. Last year, he said, “The decision is not whether or not we will ration care — the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open.” Of the NHS, Berwick says simply, “I love it,” adding that it is “one of the great human health care endeavors on earth.”
As it turns out, Berwick himself does not have to deal with the anxieties created by limited access to care and the extent of coverage. In a special benefit conferred on him by the board of directors of the Institute for Health Care Improvement, a nonprofit health care charitable organization he created and which he served as chief executive officer, Berwick and his wife will have health coverage “from retirement until death.”
Rationing for thee, but not for me. It’s the leftist way. And similarly, you can bet that Barack Obama is not going to wait in line for his health care. But you will. Just give him your money and trust him, OK?
In the latest example of myth-making on the connection between sports and domestic violence, England’s Association of Chief Police Officers stated in May that during the World Cup “cases of domestic abuse increase by nearly 30% on England match days.” The figure came from a study sponsored by the British Home Office, so it seemed credible. The shocking figure sparked a big publicity campaign, with a lurid poster featuring a cowering woman covered in bruises and the imprint of a man’s shoe.
[…]An actually trustworthy study done by the London Metropolitan Police Authority contradicted the thirty percent “finding,” but by then the media had a story that was too good to check for veracity.
[…]Anyone remember the big 1993 Super Bowl Sunday hoax? The media all jumped on a bad statistic and ran with it then too. It was “reported” that domestic violence increased by 40% during the Super Bowl. Journalists called it the “abuse bowl” and NBC ran a public service announcement telling men to stay calm during the game or they would end up in jail.
In the same year the National Coalition against Domestic Violence circulated a brochure in which they claimed that half of American women would face violence from their mate and that “more than a third are battered repeatedly every year.” This is simply an outrageous lie – fewer than one percent of the female population can be said to be “battered” – but such was the hysteria around the subject of domestic violence at the time, that people were ready to believe all men were basically monsters.
Only one reporter, Ken Ringle of the Washington Post, actually ran down the stat to its source, which was an offhand comment by a feminist activist at a press conference. It was made up out of whole cloth. There was no actual increase of domestic violence during the game. And for the past 17 years since that Super Bowl, no one has found a domestic violence link to it.
Thank you Barbara Kay for telling the truth and defending men from irrational fears and hatred.
Why do these feminist myths emerge? And why do so many women believe them? And why do so few women investigate these issues themselves? What do women have to gain from believing in myths?
Well, if all men are predators, then it seems reasonable to think that women shouldn’t marry them, or trust them to be faithful protectors and providers. So what will women do for protectors and providers if men can be relied on? The answer is bigger government and more social programs – like taxpayer-funded abortions, taxpayer-funded day-care, taxpayer-funded IVF, etc. Laws may also be needed to control men’s behavior to keep them from being bad, since men are so awful. Pretty soon, it will be illegal to even criticize women for anything they do. Oh wait – that is already punishable by jail in France.
How can a man afford to marry and start a family when he is paying 40% of his income in taxes to replace men with government and to control men’s supposedly predatorial behavior? He can’t!
Christina Hoff Sommers
Christina Hoff Sommers
Christina Hoff Sommers is my favorite feminist scholar. She’s an equity feminist – that’s the good kind of feminist that is so rare today.
I read both of those articles and I may blog about them later, but they are all worth reading now. If you want a really good long article on the alleged discrimination against women in math and science classes, then read this. It is long – but because it’s by Christina Hoff Sommers, it reads like poetry. You won’t even look up until you’re finished reading the whole thing. She is such a talented writer!
Obama has bypassed the Congressional confirmation process for Dr. Donald Berwick, a socialist, and instead given him an immediate recess appointment. What this means is that there will be no debating Dr. Berwick’s socialist views in public.
Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director, said the “recess appointment” was needed to carry out the new health care law. The law calls for huge changes in the two programs, which together insure nearly one-third of all Americans.
Mr. Pfeiffer said the president would appoint Dr. Berwick on Wednesday. Mr. Obama decided to act because “many Republicans in Congress have made it clear in recent weeks that they were going to stall the nomination as long as they could, solely to score political points,” Mr. Pfeiffer said.
This 2008 NHS paper by Dr. Berwick explains what he thinks about government-run health care in the UK. (H/T Verum Serum)
Excerpt:
The National Health Service [Britain’s single payer health care] is one of the truly astounding human endeavors of modern times. Just look at what you are trying to be: comprehensive, equitable, available to all, free at the point of care, and – more and more – aiming for excellence by world-class standards. And, because you have chosen to use a nation as the scale and taxation as the funding, the NHS isn’t just technical – it’s political…The NHS is a bridge – a towering bridge – between the rhetoric of justice and the fact of justice.
[…]You plan the supply; you aim a bit low; historically, you prefer slightly too little of a technology or service to much too much; and then you search for care bottlenecks, and try to relieve them.
[…]You could have obscured – obliterated – accountability, or left it to the invisible hand of the market, instead of holding your politicians ultimately accountable for getting the NHS sorted. You could have let an unaccountable system play out in the darkness of private enterprise instead of accepting that a politically accountable system must act in the harsh and, admittedly, sometimes unfair, daylight of the press, public debate, and political campaigning. You could have a monstrous insurance industry of claims, rules, and paper-pushing, instead of using your tax base to provide a single route of finance. You could have protected the wealthy and the well, instead of recognizing that sick people tend to be poorer and that poor people tend to be sicker, and that any health care funding plan that is just, equitable, civilized, and humane must – must – redistribute wealth from the richer among us to the poorer and less fortunate.
[…]please don’t put your faith in market forces. It’s a popular idea: that Adam Smith’s invisible hand would do a better job of designing care than leaders with plans can. I do not agree. I find little evidence anywhere that market forces, bluntly used, that is, consumer choice among an array of products with competitors’ fighting it out, leads to the health care system you want and need.
[…]I cannot believe that the individual health care consumer can enforce through choice the proper configurations of a system as massive and complex as health care. That is for leaders to do.
[…]Unfettered growth and pursuit of institutional self-interest has been the engine of low value for the US health care system. It has made it unaffordable, and hasn’t helped patients at all.
That’s who is going to administer government-run single-payer health care programs in the United States. He opposes consumer choice. He opposes competition. He wants to have a monopoly on health care, and make your decisions for you. You pay him your money based on what you earn, and he’ll decide which of your neighbors will get health care. You’re smart enough to earn the money, but not smart enough to spend it on your own family. And that’s probably what Obama believes, too, otherwise he would have picked someone else.
Thanks to Verum Serum for finding all of this. They do amazing work breaking these stories. You really need to bookmark Verum Serum and read it every day, if you haven’t already.
WINTERY KNIGHT 