Berwick has championed the British health care system for years proclaiming his outright support of rationing. In 2009, Berwick said, “The decision is not whether or not we will ration care — the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open.” In a 2008 speech, Berwick proclaimed, “I am romantic about the NHS; I love it. All I need to do to rediscover the romance is to look at health care in my own country.” Of course, the British system openly rations care for the sick and the elderly.

But Berwick ran from those statements like a scalded dog before House members who asked pointed questions about his support for rationing care. When Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.) asked him whether he supports healthcare rationing, Berwick said, “I abhor rationing.” At another point he said that he spent his whole life fighting rationing, The Hill reports.

Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) asked him whether he was still “in love” with the British healthcare system, Berwick’s response: “There are strengths and weaknesses in every healthcare system in the world. The American healthcare system needs an American solution.”

For fear of stating the obvious, it is clear Berwick was not honest in his testimony.

He cut; ran; ducked; weaved; and twisted his long history of support for a government-run health care system. Worse yet, while the Administration may deny support for rationing, their policies are opening the door to it. Just ask late stage breast cancer patients who have been threatened with the termination of insurance coverage of life-extending drug called Avastin because of cost considerations.

The Food and Drug Administration has proposed to “de-label” the drug, a move that would remove insurance and Medicare coverage for patients. The wealthy would still have access to the drug but everyone else would be forced to mortgage their house to be able to continue to use the drug to save their lives. During consideration of the action, a FDA appointee mentioned the cost of the drug basis for their decision.

Even Berwick’s own department is apparently getting into the act. The office has declared a review of the colon drug Provenge because of its cost.

Republicans should not be buying the snake oil Berwick is selling. The Senate Finance Committee should reject his nomination and should begin to end the initial efforts by our government to ration care for the sick and the elderly.

One of the people I contacted was, Dennis Gartman. One of the nation’s and world’s leading financial analysts, investors and financial public educators through his work in the media.  Dennis is the founder of The Gartman Letter….a daily financial road map for corporations, individuals, investment funds and governments. Dennis asked if he could include my e-mail in The Gartman Letter. Below is Dennis’s article concerning my e-mail.

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GENERAL COMMENTS ON THE CAPITAL MARKETS ON ONE WELL KNOWN DOCTOR’S PERSPECTIVE ON HEALTH CARE:

Our friend, Dr. David Janda, is a nationally well known orthopaedic surgeon in Ann Arbor, Michigan, involved in delivering health care for 29 years.

David’s a clinical researcher in Prevention and Health care cost containment and he founded The Institute For Preventative Sports Medicine which is the only health care cost containment organization of its kind in North America. According to the Federal government, one of his studies has lead to the prevention of 1.7 million people from being injured every year in the U.S. and saved $2 billion in health care costs per year.

David also wrote a bestselling book….The Awakening of a Surgeon…… featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show and it’s been referred to as a “Weapon of Mass Instruction” as it tells people and families how to take control of their health care and to free themselves from the insurance companies, from the HMO industry and most importantly from federal bureaucrats.

That being said, David wrote to us last evening as the health care legislation was making its way to the House floor. He’s told us in the past about the ills involved in this legislation, but now it has passed and it has come to this. We believe David’s thoughts, as a physician of some renown to be worthy of our clients’ collective attention, He wrote:

It is Sunday and it looks like Obama, Pelosi and Reid have succeeded in passing their health care plan which will destroy every person, family and business in Our country. In the process they have shredded The Constitution and Our democratic republic.

Thank you for all that you have done in informing the public and allowing my voice and my information to be heard. I believe my perspective as a “grunt” on the front line of health care delivery and 29 years experience in doing so matters. By networking my information, you allowed me to share my insight with the American public. The democrats and progressives believe the war has been won…..wrong….they might have won the battle but the War has just begun.

In the next several weeks I will be sending out an e-mail announcing that I will be leaving the medical delivery profession. My wife and daughters support my decision. The legislation authored by Obama, Pelosi and Reid is a violation of The Hippocratic Oath I took 29 years ago…..”Do No Harm”. The core of their legislation is to deny and ration care…..the most inhumane and unethical means of cutting costs. I have dedicated my life….day and night to my patients for the past 29 years…..I have attempted to add to the oath through my research and published studies which have focused on prevention…. “Preventing Harm”.

Their legislation puts me in the position of harming the very people I have been helping for the past 29 years.

In 1920, the federal government instituted legislation that took my great grandfather’s business away from him.  He owned a brewery in Chicago. He died a broken and destroyed man within a month of that event. Ninety years later, the federal government has passed] a law that will take away my beloved profession of health care delivery. I will continue to fight and will not meet the same fate as my great grandfather. If I can be further service to you please call on me.

Warm Regards,

When good men like David leave medicine we know that we are in very serious trouble. Mark our words; a year from now the state of medicine and health care here in the US will be demonstrably worse than it is now; it shall also be demonstrably more expensive and it will be even more demonstrably less available to anyone and everyone. Last night’s legislation was what the Left has been aiming for many, many years. They’ve succeeded in nationalizing health care, and they’ve succeeded in sending men such as David to the sidelines. We are all the worse for it…. demonstrably so.

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I appreciate Dennis’s friendship and kind words. I do plan on continuing to fight to repeal and replace this prohibitive legislation on behalf of America, my fellow citizens and my patients.  The medical “oversight” component will occur on January 1, 2013.  I will continue at my post on the front line until December 31, 2012 then I will continue the fight from another front. The battle might have been lost for Health Care Freedom on March 21^st but the War is far from over in bringing health care freedom to every American.

The United States Preventive Services Task Force, comprised of 16 appointees, decreed that:

1.       Women in their 40’s no longer need routine yearly mammograms

2.       Women aged 50-74 are to have mammograms only every other year

3.       Self breast exams are no longer to be done at any age

Of note, this Task Force does NOT have even one member who is a cancer specialist or oncologist, let alone a breast cancer specialist. This panel based its recommendations NOT on comprehensive new clinical studies or research, but rather on computer projections of certain data points.  A review of previous recommendations by the same Federal Government reveals that these recommendations are diametrically at odds with recommendations made just six months ago. So, what changed in six months?

New studies? No.  What changed was the introduction of the Obama-Pelosi-Reid Health Care Reform legislation, whose heart and core is based on rationing and denying care. (Note the omission of the word “soul.”) This method is the most inhumane and unethical means of cutting costs.

Let’s NOT let this Panel’s rationing objective get in the way of the real facts about breast cancer:

1.      Breast Cancer is the number 1 killer of women globally…..500,000 women will die this year

2.      Seventeen percent of Breast Cancer deaths occur in women diagnosed in their 40’s

3.      Twenty-two percent of Breast Cancer deaths occur in women diagnosed in their 50’s

4.      One of the leading factors in INCREASED survival rates in breast and other types of Cancer is based on EARLY diagnosis and intervention.

5.      Those countries with higher death rates from Cancer have health care delivery systems based on rationing tests and treatments.

The recommendations made by the “Ivory Tower” Federal Panel do not even pretend to address these five points.  However, they are completely in line with The Obama-Pelosi-Reid Health Care Legislation agenda— to deny and ration care as a means to cut costs.

On Sunday, November 22, Fox News Sunday interviewed Senator Arlen Specter, who was a Democrat before he was Republican before he was a Democrat.  Senator Specter let the “secret agenda” of Obama-Pelosi-Reid slip . When questioned on the fact that The Senate Bill cuts $500 Billion in Medicare spending over ten years, yet in ten years there will be 30 percent more people in Medicare, Senator Spector stumbled. He admitted that  Congress has NEVER cut Medicare benefits in its history and then confessed, “This Bill has a provision….a CURE….in how we can CUT Medicare—a Commission.”  That’s right, a non-elected Commission will be appointed by The President.  Starting in 2015, this Commission will oversee Medicare and its expenditures, but this Commission will NOT be accountable to the public. Initially, it will oversee cuts to Medicare Advantage, the same program that services 10 million Seniors. Using this type of panel to make such cuts, when it is NOT accountable to or elected by the public, is like bombing an enemy from 40,000 feet…..destruction occurs but you don’t see their faces.  And, by 2019, ALL limits are off, and every American can become the target of the carpet bombing.

The bad news is that through this legislation authored by Obama-Pelosi-Reid, every American is facing more than one bomber.  Through the hidden health care portion of The Stimulus Bill we are facing a squadron of bombers:  The Federal Coordinating Council of Comparative Effectiveness Research, The National Coordinator of Health Information Technology Office, and The Medicare Commission in The Health Care Bill.. Their mission is to deny and ration care, and, as stated in The Stimulus Bill, “To guide medical decisions at the time and place of care.”  Say so long to your privacy, doctor-patient privilege, choice, and control over your health care options and access.

Today it is mammogram screening tests.  Tomorrow it will be the rationing and denial of treatment, if Obama-Pelosi-Reid have their way.  Every American will become a victim of their rationing boards.   Faceless, unaccountable, and unelected, these commissions will control 17% of this country’s GNP, and 100% of your health care options.

So, how is that “Hope” and “Change” looking so far?

When opponents claim that Obamacare will lead to rationing of medical services, defenders counter with an irrelevant but true retort that care is already rationed by insurance companies.  By this logic, everything is rationed by economics.  Housing is rationed by the availability of capital to invest in housing which is a collective market choice.  Cars are rationed in that you can’t just walk into a dealer and drive off the lot.  So, yes, currently the health care market, mostly in the form of third-party payers (insurers and public programs), rations care in that there are finite resources to pay for treatments and everyone cannot have everything any time they wish.

The reason that argument is irrelevant is that the debate here is about government rationing of care, which represents an entire new level of restrictions on individuals.  When the government sets up panels of “experts” to make recommendations of what kind of care is appropriate under what circumstances and those recommendations are implemented in the form of regulations over what care will and will not be paid for by both private and public insurance, it limits the rights of patients to control their care in consultation with their physicians.  It also destroys the market for those excluded treatments which then become either prohibitively expensive or entirely unavailable.

Under Obamacare, new cost effectiveness panels will join the advisory panels like the Preventive Services Task Force.  Instead of just making clinical recommendations primarily intended to improve the quality of patient care, they will make recommendations intended to also contain the cost of care.  So when the cost effectiveness folks decide that mammograms are only indicated every two years and only for women over 50, that will become the reimbursement policy for Medicare and Medicaid, and the mandate for private insurance that must comport with coverage standards.  Sure, you could pay higher premiums for more coverage or pay out of pocket if your and your doctor think it wise to have annual mammograms at age 40, but wait, we were told Obamacare would save us money and wouldn’t decrease our coverage.

So we have a federal panel of “experts” setting policies for medical treatment.  That will hopefully prevent people from consuming unnecessary care that drives up the total cost of health care.  (Never mind that defensive medicine caused by liability concerns are strictly off the table.)  But we have just seen the knee jerk reaction of Congress and the White House to what is only a non-binding recommendation, where they instantly caved to public opinion and special interests (in the form of radiologists and the American Cancer Society) and disavowed the recommendations and assured American women that they could go right ahead and keep getting all the mammograms they want.

What will Congress do when the cost effectiveness folks decide that expensive colonoscopies should be denied to all but a limited group of patients?  Is it possible that when voters start calling their offices that Congress will step in to protect access to limitless colonoscopies?  Every time Congress or future administrations bow to pressure cost containment becomes more and more impossible.

Health and Human Services Secretary Sibelius made the farcical excuse that the Preventive Services Task Force doesn’t make policy or coverage decisions so all the controversy is a political ploy.  But that is not the point.  The entire purpose of the various new panels created under Obamacare (and already created in the stimulus bill) is precisely to make policy and coverage decisions.  In fact, the Preventive Services Task Force will play just such a role in the new world order.  So if everyone is reacting this way to a mere recommendation, how will they react to an actual policy dictate that meets opposition from some constituencies?  And when they create political pressure and the politicians give in, what happens to cost containment?

Health care professionals who agree with the Task Force recommendations to reduce the use of mammograms recognize this for exactly what it is—politicization of health care.  Under Obamacare, the most effective lobbying efforts will have more impact on the care you can get than the opinion of your physician.

The White House has launched its usual ad hominem attacks against those who have pointed to this instance as a taste of things to come.  They accuse opponents of lying and being disingenuous. They even try to imply some sinister motive to the Task Force by pointing out that its members were appointed by the Bush administration.  Since they have reduced this debate to the level of a playground back-and-forth, the “rubber and glue” principle applies and these charges are beginning to bounce right back on to the administration.