US President Barack Obama is to appoint Donald Berwick to run Medicare and Medicaid today, reports the New York Times. Berwick is a pediatrician, a professor at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health, and a founder of the non-profit Institute for Healthcare Improvement. As a "recess appointment," made while Congress is out of session, Berwick's term will end in late 2011 when this session of Congress ends.