Defenders of President Barack Obama bristle when skeptics label some of his policies “socialist.” But it was, after all, Mr. Obama who said in 2008, “I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody” — and he has pushed for higher taxes on “the rich.”
Now it has come to light that the man whom the president has picked to run a large share of ObamaCare socialized medicine has stated his own socialist aims even more directly. Donald Berwick has been nominated to run Medicare and Medicaid. Speaking in Britain in 2008, he made this emphatic remark:
“Any health care funding plan that is just, equitable, civilized and humane must, must redistribute wealth from the richer among us to the poorer and the less fortunate. Excellent health care is by definition redistributional.”
There is, of course, one huge problem with that theory: When government redistributes wealth, it makes everyone ultimately poorer. By seizing large shares of private income, it destroys the incentive that individuals have for creating wealth and economic growth in the first place.
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher once said, “The trouble with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.” Sooner or later, when enough wealth has been redistributed (or looted, if you will) from the people who earned it, the source of that wealth dries up along with the motivation to create more wealth.
But for Dr. Berwick, “excellent health care” is not just about improving health, it is about taking what belongs to “the richer” and redistributing it to “the poorer.”
Just as disturbingly, Dr. Berwick enthusiastically supports the rationing of care. He said in a 2009 interview in the journal Biotechnology Healthcare, “The decision is not whether or not we will ration care. The decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open.”
Supporters of ObamaCare claim the law will avoid the rationing of care. If the president also opposes rationing, why would he appoint someone who favors rationing to carry out a large part of our nation’s health care policies?
The American people have been promised lots of “good things” with ObamaCare that will never come about — while lots of “bad things” that were downplayed or ignored will sadly come to awful fruition.