Fightin' Words On Medicare Reform

Donald Berwick and Michael Leavitt are trading verbal body blows in The Washington Post over the effects federal health care reform will have on Medicare.

In brief: Berwick, (right), now running Medicare among other things for the Obama administration, says today that reform will help improve the system. Leavitt, (left) who ran health and human services in the Bush administration, said Friday in the Post:

What Congress passed this spring is the illusion of Medicare
reform. It does not ease cost pressures but papers over them with unsustainable price controls. It will end in disappointment, just as every other such effort has.

On one thing they seem to agree. As Berwick puts it: "We can't sustain a system that rewards how much is done to patients instead of how much is accomplished for patients."