Hospital exec may replace great Medicare boss

It's not news that the Senate is unlikely to confirm Donald Berwick as head of the Woodlawn-based Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. As I wrote last year, "Dr. Donald M. Berwick is far too intelligent, passionate and brutally honest for Congress to approve him to run the bloated Medicare program."

Obama appointed him in recess. What's news, as Robert Pear reports in the NYT, is that Berwick's replacement may end up being his deputy, Marilyn Tavenner, who was head of outpatient services for Hospital Corporation of America, the for-profit hospital chain. Perhaps Tavenner's experience at the cost-obsessed HCA will lead to some real progress on cost and quality in Medicare. But there is ample precedent in government for ex-industry executives to work harder for their former employers than for taxpayers.