Published July 7, 2010
Donald Berwick, the Newton doctor and health care reformer, will get to skip the Senate grilling and go straight to the helm of Medicare and Medicaid. The White House Blog announced President Obama will make a controversial recess appointment Wednesday:
Dr. Donald Berwick (Courtesy)
In April, President Obama nominated Dr. Donald Berwick to serve as Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Many Republicans in Congress have made it clear in recent weeks that they were going to stall the nomination as long as they could, solely to score political points. … CMS has been without a permanent administrator since 2006, and even many Republicans have called on the Administration to move to quickly to name a permanent head.
Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., told Politico: “Once again, the Obama administration is going behind closed doors out of fear the American people will learn that Dr. Berwick plans to use rationing as a cost cutting tool to achieve the billions of dollars in cuts to Medicare called for in the health care reform bill.”
The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein today says Berwick is decidedly nonpartisan:
He’s known as a zealot and an entrepreneur when it comes to quality improvement. As an issue, quality — as compared to cost and access — is quite young, and Berwick is frequently credited with securing its place in the discussion, and saving many lives in the process.
Some good reading:
- Ezra Klein: The most important health-care reformer you’ve never heard of
- WBUR’s Martha Bebinger profiled Berwick after he was knighted in 2005.
- The Boston Globe called him “revolutionary” in a 2004 profile.