So while the “lame duck” was limping to a finish this was taking place with ObamaCare.
Since the law’s passage, there are hordes of Washington bureaucrats scrambling to write rules and regulations pertaining to the health-care overhaul. The reason we need a stable of bureaucrats in the first place is that, as the New York Times put it, “The laws [in ObamaCare] were so broad and complex that executive-branch regulators have wide leeway in determining what the rules should say and how they should be carried out.”
To recap, that’s unelected officials who now have the discretion of writing the guidelines on how you get treated.
And guess which unelected officials are leading the implementation discussions? That would be none other than the Grim Reaper and Dr. Death, who otherwise go by the names Donald Berwick and Ezekiel Emanuel.
Berwick, recall, is the Medicare czar who was given a recess appointment because his calling Britain’s socialized health-care system a “seductress,” while also writing that the government should ration the “number of centers engaging” in “cardiac surgery” “neonatal intensive care” and “cancer care” were even too toxic for Democrats.
Berwick leads the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, an agency with an annual budget bigger than the Pentagon’s, and yet refuses to grant interviews or take questions from reporters. In fact, he ran away from our cameras back in September and even ordered hotel security to shield him from reporters who tried asking him questions after a speech he gave to the National Committee for Quality Assurance.
So there is the Grim Reaper.
But then there’s Dr. Death, Ezekiel Emanuel — Rahm’s brother and an ad hoc adviser to President Obama on all things health care. Last week, Zeke and Berwick led a meeting at the White House with lobbyists of health-care organizations to begin a discussion on the execution of ObamaCare. The invitation noted, “Thank you for your continued engagement as we take on the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. We are kicking off a series of White House meetings between senior administration officials and health care providers to exchange ideas on areas in need of attention. We invite you (or a representative) and your organization to join us.”
Surely, a meeting of this magnitude would be open to the press, right? Heck, Obama did promise “an unmatched level of transparency, participation, and accountability across the entire administration.”
That was then, and this is now, where the details of ObamaCare’s strcure are open to a handful of selected lobbyists only — not reporters and not C-SPAN cameras, as the hackneyed pledge went.
It can never be good when these things take place behind closed doors. So much for openness and transparency from the administration of Barack Hussein Obama.
This is why come January the steps must be taken to defund and repeal this monstrosity.
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