Wallace revives tired right-wing attacks on "controversial" Berwick quotes
Chris Wallace claimed that President Obama used a recess appointment to install Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services head Donald Berwick to avoid defending Berwick's "controversial statements" regarding health care rationing and Britain's National Health Service. Wallace's comments, echoing right-wing media attacks on Berwick, omitted his criticisms of NHS and accurate statement that health care rationing is already happening.
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Wallace mimics right-wing attacks on Berwick
Wallace: airs "controversial statements" from Berwick. While interviewing White House senior adviser David Axelrod, Wallace suggested that "the real reason" Berwick was recess-appointed was because the Obama administration "didn't want to defend some of his controversial statements." Wallace then aired Berwick's "controversial statements" on NHS and health care rationing, claiming they show "he favors government controls on health care."
From the July 11 edition of Fox Broadcasting Co.'s Fox News Sunday:
WALLACE: Isn't the real reason that Berwick got a recess appointment because you didn't want to defend some of his controversial statements?
AXELROD: Absolutely not.
WALLACE: Let me just put them up on the screen, then you can respond. Here's Berwick on the National Health Service of Britain: "I am romantic about the NHS. I love it." Here's Berwick on government involvement in health care: "The decision is not whether or not we will ration care, the decision is whether we will ration with ... eyes open." The fact is Berwick will have a budget bigger than the Pentagon and he favors government controls on health care.
Conservative bloggers made similar attacks. As Media Matters documented, right-wing media figures like Erick Erickson have used these quotes to attack Berwick's appointment, claiming that he "openly wants to destroy the American medical system" and prefers Britain's system "where some people die waiting in line for medical treatment." The Fox Nation has also attacked Berwick as a "Health Care Rationer Running Medicare."
Berwick also criticized British NHS
Berwick: "Is the NHS perfect? Far from it." In the same speech that Wallace cited, Berwick said that NHS was "far from" perfect and that "the NHS has a lot more work ahead." Berwick then listed 10 suggestions for how the NHS could further improve. From Berwick's 2008 speech:
BERWICK: Is the NHS perfect? Far from it. Far from it. I know that as well as anyone in this room, from front line to Whitehall, I have had the privilege of observing performance and even to help to measure its performance.
[...]
BERWICK: There is less progress in some areas, especially with comparison to other European systems, such as in specialty access, in cancer outcomes, in patient centeredness, in life expectancy and infant mortality for socially deprived populations. In other words, in improving its quality, two facts are true: The NHS in en route, and the NHS has a lot more work ahead.
Axelrod to Wallace: "[Y]ou pulled quotes out of longer pieces." Axelrod pushed back against Wallace's misleading characterization of Berwick's statements, noting that Berwick was "quite critical" of NHS:
AXELROD: The fact is that you pulled quotes out of longer pieces. He was also quite critical of elements of the British system, and when he was talking about rationing --
WALLACE: "I am romantic about the NHS. I love it"?
AXELROD: -- when he was talking about -- he had -- was quite critical of aspects of the British system. He is not coming to implement the British system.
In full comment, Berwick explained that current system rations care
With "eyes open" comment, Berwick was saying U.S. system already rations. In the June 2009 interview with Biotechnology Healthcare Wallace cited, Berwick pointed out that the current U.S. health care system rations care, and that the question for the future is how best to ration. Wallace omitted this context on air. From Biotechnology Healthcare, June 2009:
BIOTECHNOLOGY HEALTHCARE: Critics of CER have said that it will lead to the rationing of healthcare.
BERWICK: We can make a sensible social decision and say, "Well, at this point, to have access to a particular additional benefit [new drug or medical intervention] is so expensive that our taxpayers have better use for those funds." We make those decisions all the time. The decision is not whether or not we will ration care -- the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open. And right now, we are doing it blindly.
Indeed, insurance companies already ration care. The insurance industry admits to using cost benefit analyses in coverage decisions. In an interview with NPR's Morning Edition, Wellpoint chief medical officer Dr. Sam Nussbaum told co-host Steve Inskeep: "Where the private sector has been far more effective than government programs is in limiting clinical services to those that are best meeting the needs of patients." Former CIGNA senior executive Wendell Potter testified before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation that, "To help meet Wall Street's relentless profit expectations, insurers routinely dump policyholders who are less profitable or who get sick." Potter further testified that insurers "also dump small businesses whose employees' medical claims exceed what insurance underwriters expected."
Spain or Holland?
...because he won't be given the opportunity to do it himself?
As much as i like the guy, this is politically stupid. It's just going to give wing nuts all the talking points they can eat.
...and for what reason? We already passed health care reform.
This would have been a great opportunity for us to show that Republicans are truly out of touch when it comes to the health care system.
It's called defending the facts and the truth, not "defending Berwick".
It's not surprising you've been called, correctly, a "concern troll".
It's sick and sad, but that's the consequence of media conglomerates. Instead of referring to concrete primary sources, we have to suffer through outrageous outrage from both the right and the left.
We all saw the "controversy" over this guy months ago. He got recess-appointed. Under dubious circumstances, wing nuts are led to believe that something is fishy and they're constitutionally addressing their grievances.
Im not suggesting that media SHOULD speculate on seemingly fishy stories, (there's way too much of that already) but that you cant blame them.
Axelrod pointing out that the hearing would be a circus. It would only have been a circus if there was something to hide or absurd that was said. That alone is enough to cause media figures to go in a frenzy .The talking points against him arent any worse than those against Sonia Sotomayor or Elena Kagan. We werent worried then, why would we be worried now?
Heck, Axelrod brings up the Bush CMS appointees endorsement of Berwick as if to point out that "even Repubs like him" all while he's suggesting that Republicans are ridiculous before they even get a single answer from the guy. Cant have it both ways.
It's time to move on. The right-wing noise machine can take a powder and find something else to scream and yell about.
...some other lies to push into the mainstream media.
I strongly agree with both of you, I assert that MMFA serves a function to document and poke holes in the strawman arguments (there's a mixed metaphor) by thorough application of facts. There is literally no need to do more except for those who purposefully seek to disinform*.
Defending against disinformation is logically difficult if not impossible after you have exposed the facts. Disinformation is used to deceive, not inform.
My closing line is, "Nothing is unlimited in the universe. Therefore rationing is a given."
* Disinformation is false information deliberately and often covertly spread (as by the planting of rumors) in order to influence public opinion or obscure the truth.
"Do Nothing Party", Republicans!