Donald Berwick

Just a quick note that, to no-one's surprise, the corporate media has pretty much ignored the Republican filibuster which prevented the appointment of Donald Berwick to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (known for historical reasons as CMS) from becoming permanent.

They claim it's because he once praised the British National Health Service, which makes him a commie, but Brian Beutler does an excellent job of explaining what's really going on. Berwick is a proponent of comparative effectiveness research and cost effectiveness analysis -- as well as being darn right radical in his advocacy for patient centered care and the empowerment of patients as the decision makers in their own health. But the Republicans ignore the part of the previous sentence after the dash and focus on the first part, which of course makes him a death panelist.

What they are really afraid of is that he can prove that public insurance, and especially a single payer system like Medicare, can deliver better health care with happier customers for less money than private insurance. If they let him get away with proving that, their corporate owners won't be happy.