Marathon Pundit: WSJ slams Obama recess pick of health care rationing supporter to head CMS

"Excellent healthcare is by definition redistributional. Britain, you chose well." Donald Berwick, President Obama's choice to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, 2008.

The Wall Street Journal is not a supporter of health care rationing.

White House respect for the public's health-care views dropped another notch yesterday, if that's possible, with its recess appointment of Donald Berwick. Circumventing Senate confirmation to appoint the new Medicare chief is part of the same political willfulness that inflicted ObamaCare on the country despite the objections of most voters.

Even Max Baucus, the Senate Finance Chairman, issued a statement critical of this end-around. President Obama claimed Republicans were stalling the appointment "for political purposes," but Mr. Baucus hadn't scheduled hearings and the nomination paperwork wasn't even finished 11 weeks after he was named. Mr. Obama's real calculation was to dodge a debate in election season over Dr. Berwick's frequent praise for European health systems that ration care. The last thing most Democrats want now is to reprise the ObamaCare controversy.

Some Republicans have argued that Dr. Berwick is too radical and partisan, but that's not why his appointment deserves debate. The problem is that his views are so conventional. They are typical of the philosophy of the modern health-policy left that underpins ObamaCare. In that limited sense, he's the perfect candidate to run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or CMS, which has vast new powers to reshape American medicine.

Without any public vetting, Dr. Berwick will now assume control of a bureaucracy with a budget larger than the Defense Department and that controls 4% of GDP today, hitting 5.9% by 2020 if the Congressional Budget Office is right. His main task will be finding some way to reduce the growth of Medicare from its average rate of 4% over the last two decades to the ObamaCare mandate of 2%, in order to find enough money to fund the new entitlement.