President Barack Obama’s appointment Wednesday of Dr. Donald Berwick to run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services was widely seen as a smart and welcome appointment. The Harvard professor is an acclaimed patient care specialist and a leader of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, a think tank whose linkage with hospitals, nurses and doctors has earned him endorsements from the American Hospital Association and AARP. The CMMS, moreover, has gone since 2006 without a director and clearly needs a leader to plan implementation of the health care reform bill.
Yet Republicans predictably rose to complain about the president’s use of a so-called recess appointment to install Dr. Berwick. They claimed it wasn’t fair because the Senate, off on the extended July 4th holiday break, didn’t get a chance to grill him.
Look who’s talking about fairness.
Senate Republicans presently have seemingly interminable “holds” on 69 administration appointees, all of whom have been approved by Senate committees, generally months ago and some nearly a year ago. Four who are languishing in this limbo while awaiting perfunctory approval by the full Senate — Barbara S. Haskew, Neil G. McBride, Marilyn A. Brown and William B. Sansom — are nominated to fill four vacancies on the 9-member board of TVA.
The agency badly needs their services to adopt long-range power plans. In fact, one of the five members who presently give the agency the quorum that is needed to legally approve any piece of business is a volunteer holdover. His board term has expired since TVA began waiting on the four pending nominees