A Big Task

President Barack Obama is to name Donald Berwick, a professor of pediatrics and health-policy at Harvard Medical School, to lead Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service, reports the Wall Street Journal's Health Blog. The paper adds that Berwick — if confirmed — would be taking on big challenges. In particular, the health reform bill requires Medicaid to expand to cover about 16 million more Americans while states are cutting back on funding Medicaid and doctors are dropping Medicaid patients from their rolls. "This is always a big job, but the administration of health-care reform, which includes implementing the hundreds of billions of dollars in Medicare cuts and the biggest expansion of Medicaid in its history, will make it more challenging than ever," Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) says to the Journal.