Epitaph for the Bush Health Care Plan

Every once in a while I run across a quote I just have to give wider circulation on the web. I'm reading up on people and organizations dealing with how to solve the health care mess. Donald Berwick runs a group out of Cambridge, Mass. called the Institute for Health Care Improvement, which is trying to improve the quality of care most Americans receive. In an interview with Health Affairs 18 months ago, here's what he had to say about the president's plan to move toward health savings accounts and make individual "consumers" more financially responsible for their own health care choices:

I do not believe that making the individual American patient more “cost-sensitive” has any rationale in science, ethics, or evidence. It will fail, and it will fail miserably. It will result in a shifting of care away from the people who need it the most. It is a displacement of responsibility for changing the system. You know, if CalPERS or Xerox or GE can’t change care through using its purchasing power, then I absolutely promise you that Mrs. Jones can’t. The idea that she will now be more sensitive because she pays an extra ten bucks out of pocket is, to me, nearly stupid.