Marxist installed to run Medicare, Medicaid
4:51 am July 15th, 2010As with many Constitutional provisions, “recess appointments” have come to be used in ways the founders didn’t intend. Presidents now use recess appointments to get a desired appointee into office — at least for a time — over the objections of recalcitrant legislators, especially when the Senate is in the hands of the opposition party.
But President Obama’s recess appointment of Dr. Donald Berwick to the position of Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services — July 7, when lawmakers were out of town for their annual July Fourth break — broke new ground, because Dr. Berwick was not a nominee whose appointment had been subjected to inordinate delays or an overtly hostile reception by the Congress.
Dr. Berwick was nominated on April 19, less than three months ago. He had not yet had a hearing. His committee vetting wasn’t complete. Why the rush?
There’s little doubt President Obama wished to avoid the mortifying spectacle of Dr. Berwick being asked to explain his essentially Marxist view that government-run health care is a good thing because it is and ought to be a method of redistributing wealth from the productive to the mendicant classes, in full Senate hearings, on the eve of this fall’s off-year elections, when Democrats may fairly expect to have their heads handed to them by voters, as it is.


