Newshoggers Archive: New Leadership at CMS?

Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.

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Friday, March 26, 2010

New Leadership at CMS?

By John Ballard

Maggie Mahar passes on a hopeful rumor together with a spate of videos from the documentary based on her book, Money Driven Medicine.

Dr. Don Berwick to Become Medicare Director? If It�s True, This Is Wonderful News

Within the past hour both New America Foundation�s Joanne Kenen and Wall Street Journal blog �Washington Wire� have reported the rumor�not yet confirmed�that President Obama has chosen Dr. Donald Berwick, the president and founder of the Institute for HealthCare Improvement (IHI) to become the new director of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS). Readers who have seen Money-Driven Medicine, the documentary based on my book will recognize Berwick�s name: he is one of the stars of the film.
Not long ago, I wrote about the need for strong leadership at CMS: �For some time, I have argued that I believe that White House health care policy-makers want to select someone strong enough to pursue a relatively radical agenda. My guess is that the White House did not want to face a battle over Senate confirmation of such a candidate while fighting the larger war over healthcare reform.

�Rumors have circulated in Washington for months about who will be offered the position�and who may have already turned it down. All of the names I have heard would be excellent candidates: visionary, experienced, articulate and iconoclastic. They would be willing to break the bureaucratic mold, as needed, discarding worn ideas, embracing new ones and admitting to mistakes along the way, in a process that IHI�s Don Berwick describes as �continuous improvement.�

�It is clear that we need a CMS director who will overhaul how we pay for care, penalizing inefficiency, ferreting out fraud, and squeezing out waste, while rewarding better, safer, more collaborative care. . Medicare must pay for Value, not Volume.�...

As Kennen points out: �For anyone who doubts that the Obama administration is committed to saving Medicare, to delivery-system reform, to controlling costs by improving quality -- this is your answer . . . Spend some time browsing the IHI website,� Kennen advises. � IHI is working, and thinking, and creating and visualizing across the health care spectrum. . . .. And let's hope that the Republican �no cooperation� vow doesn't extend to his confirmation.�

More links and videos at the source.