“No one here is talking about rationing,” said Peter Orszag, director of the White House Office for Management and Budget. “What we are talking about, look at the source of that 30 percent or so in potential efficiency gains in the health system are from unnecessary procedures, unnecessary days in hospital, unnecessary applications of technology and what have you.”

President Barack Obama’s nominee to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which runs Medicare, is a strong supporter of the government-run health care system in Britain, who said in a 2009 interview about Comparative Effectiveness Research: “The decision is not whether or not we will ration care–the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open.”

…In choosing Berwick, the Obama administration is implicitly admitting that the health care law passed by the Democrats in March will lead to the rationing of health care, said Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) in a May 19 press release.

Concerning Berwick’s 2009 comment about the rationing of health care, the White House released a statement to several news organizations in which spokesman Reid Cherlin said the following:

“No one is surprised that Republicans plan to use this confirmation process to trot out the same arguments and scare tactics they hoped would block health insurance reform. The fact is, rationing is rampant in the system today, as insurers make arbitrary decisions about who can get the care they need. Don Berwick wants to see a system in which those decisions are transparent– and that the people who make them are held accountable.”

The White House statement, according to Roberts, seemed to acknowledge that the new health care law would simply ration care in a transparent way.

“This is really a fascinating response. Instead of flat out denials of government rationing we have excuses,” Roberts said on the Senate floor on May 19.

“And if you read between the lines you will notice that for the first time ever in this debate the Obama White House is admitting that their health care plan will ration health care,” the senator said.

Roberts made it clear that he does not accept health care rationing “transparent or otherwise.”

Do these guys ever tell the American people the truth about anything?