The White House has stated Tuesday that Dr. Donald M. Berwick, a health policy official, will run Medicare and Medicaid.  Dr. Berwick is a professor of the Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Public Health, a pediatrician, and co-founder of a nonprofit organization promoting healthcare improvement.

White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer indicated the “recess appointment” by Obama was required to implement the new healthcare law without stalling by republicans.  Pfeiffer explained President Obama’s reasoning for the appointment, which will only be effective until the next congressional session ends in late 2011, was acted on because “many Republicans in Congress have made it clear in recent weeks that they were going to stall the nominations as long as they could, solely to score political points”.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services have been without a permanent administrator since November 2006.  Senators were still waiting on Dr. Berwick to provide responses to some of their questions and it is likely that he would have faced a long struggle to win Congressional approval.

Dr. Berwick is an outspoken proponent of rationed healthcare and cap spending who has backed efforts “to reduce the total supply of high-technology medical and surgical care.”

Dr. Berwick will undoubtedly face many difficult tasks, including averting a 21 percent cut in Medicare payments to doctors which will take affect later this year. Such cuts in Medicare payments could damage the quality of care and cause doctors to decline new patients, so how Berwick will improve healthcare quality and right the national insurance ship will wait to be seen.