CQ HEALTHBEAT NEWS
Dec. 8, 2011 – 4:37 p.m.
Berwick Lets Loose Against ‘Death Panel’ Rhetoric
By Dena Bunis, CQ HealthBeat Managing Editor
Freed from the confines of his office overlooking Capitol Hill, former Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Donald M. Berwick described for an audience of colleagues in the health policy world this week what he called the cynicism of Washington, epitomized by the “hogwash” claim that the health overhaul law included “death panels.”
“The outrageous rhetoric about death panels — the claim, nonsense, fabricated out of nothing but fear and lies, that some plot is afoot to, literally, kill patients under the guise of end-of-life care. That is hogwash,” Berwick said Wednesday in remarks prepared for the Institute for Health Improvement’s annual conference in Orlando, Fla. Berwick, who stepped down from the CMS post last week, headed the institute before he joined the agency. The Boston-based organization sponsors various programs to improve health care quality.
Berwick said the death panel talk “is purveyed by cynics; it employs deception; and it destroys hope. It is beyond cruelty to have subjected our elders, especially, to groundless fear in the pure service of political agendas.”
To those who knew Berwick before his 16 months as head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), such strong comments would likely seem in character. But while he worked in the Hubert Humphrey Building, Berwick kept his public comments unfailingly polite. He concentrated on pushing his vision of patient safety, innovation and the like.
But Wednesday his remarks convey a different tone.
“It is one of the great and needless tragedies of this stormy time in health care that the ‘death panel’ rhetoric has denied patients the care that they want, denied caregivers the information they need to give that care, and denied our nation access to a mature, open, informed, and balanced discussion of the challenge of advanced illness and the commitment to individual dignity. It is a travesty.”
The notion of death panels erupted when former Alaska Gov. and GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin said the health care law (PL 111-148, PL 111-152) would mean seniors would have to stand in front of death panels to find out if they were worthy of health care. The claim was based on language in the House version of the bill regarding end-of-life care that never made it in the Senate measure, the one ultimately adopted.
The issue dogged the administration long after the health care overhaul was passed. In January of this year, the administration yanked language on end-of-life planning for seniors from a Medicare regulation on annual physicals. (See related story, CQ HealthBeat, Jan. 5, 2011).
Berwick has his own notion of what a death panel is.
“Maybe a real death panel is a group of people who tell health care insurers that it is OK to take insurance away from people because they are sick or at risk for becoming sick,” Berwick said in his remarks. “How about all of us — all of us in America — becoming a life panel, unwilling to rest easy, in what is still the wealthiest nation on earth, while a single person within our borders lacks access to the health care they need as a basic human right?”
Berwick also brought up the term “rationing” and how it has been used. “Their distorted and demagogic use of that term is another travesty in our public debate,” he said.
One reason Republicans said they were so opposed to confirming Berwick as CMS administrator was because of his work with the British Health System and statements they said he made that suggest he supports rationing. The outcry from the GOP was so strong that President Obama put Berwick in the top CMS job as a recess appointment and the doctor who trained and worked at Harvard never did get his day before senators at a confirmation hearing.
“I would have loved to keep at that job longer,” Berwick told his Florida audience. “But as you know, the politics of Washington, and especially the politics of the United States Senate, said ‘no.’ But, overall, I don’t feel an ounce of regret.”
Berwick Lets Loose Against ‘Death Panel’ Rhetoric
Berwick speech (pdf)
Dena Bunis can be reached at dbunis@cq.com.