Health innovator eying U.S.

posted by Lawrence Shipman

Donald Berwick, president and CEO of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, is President Barack Obama's first choice to become the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Berwick's expertise has been utilized worldwide to solve healthcare problems. He is known for his beliefs that quality healthcare should be provided at a small expense, which is part of the reason why the Obama administration is seeking him out. They will be highly scrutinized for the costs associated with the new healthcare bill.

Over the next 10 years, Medicare will be scaled back by more than $400 billion. "He has longstanding recognition for expertise and for not being a partisan individual, so I think that will assist him in his dealings with the Congress, both with the majority and hopefully the minority, as well," Gail Wilensky, an economist who ran Medicare and Medicaid from 1990 to 1992, during the first Bush administration said to the Boston Globe.

The final package of provisions to the healthcare reform bill was signed into law by Obama on Tuesday while he was at Northern Virginia Community College.