In response to the Obama administration's recess-appointment of Dr. Donald Berwick to run the Center for Medicare and medicaid Services, AFP VP for Policy Phil Kerpen issued the following statement:

President Obama's circumvention of the Senate and public debate via the recess appointment of Dr. Donald Berwick to run the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services is the latest evidence of the president's complete disregard for the legitimate legislative process. As we've shown at http://www.ObamaChart.com, this is becoming a dominant theme of this administration.

The Berwick recess appointment is particularly outrageous in light of his extreme views.

Dr. Berwick supports the rationing of medical care using the British National Health Service as a model that he thinks we should follow not just in Medicare and Medicaid but throughout the United States health system.

In an interview last year, Berwick said: "The decision is not whether we will ration care. The decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open."

This is a man who believes government should have centralized control over health care. He specifically looks to the National Institute for Clinical Excellence in Britain as a model, with its measure of "quality adjusted life years" used to deny treatment to people who are too old or too sick. 

Berwick said of the British system: "Cynics beware, I am romantic about the National Health Service; I love it. All I need to do to rediscover the romance is to look at health care in my own country. The NHS is one of the astounding human endeavours of modern times. Because you use a nation as the scale and taxation as the funding, the NHS is highly political."

President Obama has used a recess appointment to force an extremist advocate of rationing and government control of health care on the American people.