From The Times
June 3, 2010

Republicans attack healthcare nominee over his love of NHS
A visionary American academic is at the centre of a new battle over the future of US healthcare because of his fervent admiration for the National Health Service in Britain.
Donald Berwick, a Harvard-trained paediatrician and founder of a leading health policy think-tank, is being attacked by Republicans who could block his involvement in the enforcement of President Obama’s hard-won health reforms. His sin? To admit that he “fell in love” with the NHS.
When Professor Berwick was chosen by the White House to lead America’s biggest state-run health provider, his nomination was expected to sail through Congress unchallenged. Mr Obama’s health reforms appeared doomed, and the previous two heads of the Centres for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) had been approved without so much as a formal vote.
US health reform has since become a reality, and Professor Berwick’s past life as a devotee and consultant to the NHS — he received an honorary knighthood in 2005 — has come back to haunt him and the White House.
Thrown on to the defensive by Mr Obama’s success in forcing a compromise health Bill through Congress three months ago, Republicans have zeroed in on Professor Berwick’s nomination with the aim of resurrecting the healthcare battle and turning it to their advantage in the mid-term elections.
“He is bad news,” John Cornyn, a Republican Senator from Texas, told the Politico website. “If he wants to turn America into the National Health Service — he thinks that is the model — he is going to find a lot of pushback.”
The White House has accused the Republicans of seeking “an excuse to re-fight healthcare” — yet Professor Berwick’s past speeches will give ample ammunition to those who accuse Mr Obama of trying to socialise American medicine. In one address being circulated to the Republican leadership, Professor Berwick said the NHS could be an example for the whole world — “an example, I must say, that the United States needs now more than most other countries do”.
In another speech in 2008, he said the British system was, “to an American observer . . . such a seductress”.
If appointed, Professor Berwick’s task will be to supervise the expansion of the state and federally run insurance system for the poor, known as Medicaid, to cover an additional 16 million people. He will also be expected to cut by $400 billion (£270 billion) the cost of Medicare, which guarantees health coverage for the elderly, without harming the quality of care.


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 Philip Allsopp wrote:
Having lived half my life in the UK and half in the US (I was born in Brighton, England), I am sickened by the repeated blocking of long-overdue health care reform in the US by Republicans who are constantly whining about the evils of what they call "socialized medicine".

In the United States we have - and let's be clear about this - "socialized defense". I can't remember the last time I received a reminder from general McCrystal or the Joint Chiefs of Staff that my defense insurance deductible was still unused or my benefits were running out and that I needed to pay higher premiums next year.

So, for national defense, the police and fire services, we have socialized models to use the Republicans' phrases. No complaints from the right wing about those August institutions. They conveniently never, ever talk about those hallowed services as being "socialized" when in fact they are.

There are no death squads in the UK. Several years ago, my mother, then 87 years old fell and broke her shoulder. Within 2 weeks she had a new titanium joint - courtesy of the National Health Service. If there were death squads, she'd never been given such fabulous treatment in her waning years.

What the Republicans seem content to continue in the US is a huge hidden form of taxation. It comes in the form of countless hours spent on the phone intermediating between a doctor who wants payment and a profiteering health insurer who refuses coverage (for "business reasons"). As proponents of low taxation, Republicans conveniently ignore the cruel waste of time and effort that millions of families have to endure every week as they battle uncaring and generally rude "customer service" call centers run by the private health insurers in the US. But then one has to remember who's been funding election campaigns of those so vehemently against health care reform. Its pretty clear.

Phil Allsopp, Scottsdale, Arizona

you will also notice that republicans all fail to comment.  
because they know they are wrong.

verslagen1 wrote on 06/04/10 at 20:29:42:

gee wizz I wonder why you didn't direct all the guys when they were showing there guns ,to a gun site.Oh shoot you should have directed all those memorial day posts ,to a memorial day site .
I did not see health care in the No talky about.