Permanent Administrator Picked for CMS

The White House announced on Tuesday, July 6, that President Obama will use his recess appointment prerogative to make Donald Berwick, MD, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). The move quickly enraged Republicans who had opposed his nomination. The president nominated Berwick in April.

“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,” White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer wrote Tuesday on the White House blog. “With the agency facing new responsibilities to protect seniors’ care under the Affordable Care Act, there’s no time to waste with Washington game-playing. That’s why tomorrow the president will use a recess appointment to put Dr. Berwick at the agency’s helm and provide strong leadership for the Medicare program without delay.”

The move fans flames of an already heated battle over Berwick’s nomination, with advocates and opponents vying to frame the new CMS leader as an innovative healthcare leader or, alternatively, dangerous advocate of healthcare rationing. The appointment is good until the end of the next session of Congress, in late 2011, after which Berwick would have to be re-nominated to continue in the job and would likely face even greater opposition if the GOP makes expected gains in the Senate.

A pediatrician with three Harvard degrees, Berwick is known in the health policy world for founding the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, an influential think tank in Cambridge, Mass., in 1991. He has been a leading advocate for the idea that the quality of healthcare can improve while errors are reduced and costs decreased.

Medical societies, including the American Medical Association and numerous health reform advocates have lauded Berwick as a qualified and innovative leader.

CMS has not had a permanent head for four years. The Democratic-controlled Senate never took up the nomination of Kerry Weems, former President George W. Bush’s choice in 2007 to head the agency, and the CMS has cycled through a series of acting administrators who do not need Senate confirmation.