Thursday, March 31, 2011

Berwick on ACOs

In the latest New England Journal of Medicine, Medicare chief Dr. Donald Berwick describes, "Launching Accountable Care Organizations -- The Proposed Rule for the Medicare Shared Savings Program".

Naturally, he couches the new government guidelines in flowery language such as "shared decision making about diagnostic and therapeutic options", "integrated organization that supports expending resources on programs to improve quality and reduce the provision of unnecessary services", and "a central role for health information technology in enabling the organization to manage population health".

But if you want a translation of what those nice-sounding buzzwords mean, take a look at the 3/22/2011 Washington Times OpEd by physicians David Gratzer and Jason Fodeman, "Obamacare: One year later".

They translate some of the bureaucrat-ese and explain how the Obama Administration's real agenda is massive government intrusion into the doctor-patient relationship.

Unfortunately, this is not an April Fool's joke. But if Americans maintain their opposition to ObamaCare, we can have the final say, rather than letting men like Berwick have the last laugh...