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Before Obama picked him to be our new Medicare czar, Berwick was the chief executive officer of an outfit he founded called the Institute for Health Care Improvement (IHI). IHI bills itself as a nonprofit charity, but it seems to do an awful lot of work on behalf of for-profit entities. As CEO of this enterprise, Dr. Berwick earned a cool $2.3 million in 2008. But, more to the point, IHI will provide him with private health care coverage during his declining years: "The Institute created a postretirement health benefit plan for its chief executive officer (CEO). It provides the CEO and his spouse medical insurance from retirement until death."
In other words, Dr. Berwick has made sure that he and his wife will never be subjected to the tender mercies of Medicare, the health care program for seniors over which he now has control. Thus, even after he has implemented rationing programs modeled after those of NICE, he won't have to worry about his wife suffering for lack of drugs deemed too pricey by some obscure comparative effectiveness calculation. You and I, on the other hand, won't be so lucky once we're on Medicare. If we contract deadly diseases requiring treatment that costs more than our lives are "worth," we're toast. This is why the Berwick appointment matters — even more than the nomination of a mere Supreme Court justice.
