Medicare chief defends healthcare law before irritated Republican lawmakers

[DearAbby]

Dr. Donald Berwick tells a Senate panel that repealing healthcare legislation would be a major mistake. GOP senators, meanwhile, seek to focus on the circumstances of Berwick's appointment and the hearing format.

Previewing the partisan healthcare battle to come next year, the Obama administration's new head of Medicare and Medicaid went to the Capitol on Wednesday to defend the new healthcare law against irritated Republican lawmakers for the first time.

Dr. Donald Berwick, whom Obama appointed in July without Senate confirmation to help lead implementation of the new healthcare law, told lawmakers that repealing the law would be a major a mistake.

"I can't think of a worse plan," Berwick, a pediatrician and leading advocate for improving healthcare quality, told the Senate Finance Committee.


More:
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-berwick-congress-20101118,0,3957533.story

[Frustratedlady]

1. These people (I'm being kind) are out of control with their new power.

In all my years of watching politics, I have never seen a group so full of venom and hate as these Republican congressional members.

How, in heaven's name, will Obama or the public ever get through to them that this is not what the election was about. It was about getting work done.

Someone is going to get killed before it's all said and done. These people are simply out of control.

[gratuitous]

2. Repealing the health care reform is empty posturing

The Republicans know it, the Democrats know it, anyone with a fifth grade understanding of how Congress works and the presidential power of the veto knows it. Who doesn't know that repealing health care reform is impossible? Our stalwart bulldogs of the Fourth Estate and the Nitwit Brigade that brought us such luminaries as Sharron Angle and Christine O'Donnell.

[eridani]

3. Repealing parts of it by amendment is possible

Naturally, they'll leave the mandates in but strip the minimal regulations. It doesnn't matter that teabaggers don't like the mandates--the insurance companies do.