Guess It Depends on How You Define "Open and Transparent"

Tweet me!

User Rating: / 3
PoorBest 

Dr. James Gault's Retired Doc's Thoughts blog has an excellent post today about the abrupt recess appointment of Dr. Don Berwick as the head of The Center for Medicare Services.  The post points out that Dr. Berwick appears to express contradictory views about society's need to ration and the individual's desire to have whatever the heck they want in the way of medical care, whenever the heck they want it. 

It should be a grave disappointment to all of us that Dr. Berwick, (possibly the first pediatrician ever to be placed in charge of healthcare for the elderly), was never asked or allowed to explain his perspectives and approach to managing Medicare and Medicaid to the American public prior to his appointment. For all practical purposes the appointment was made "in the dead of night", and in a way specifically designed to hide Dr. Berwick and his views from public scrutiny.

As detailed here, President Obama's comments about making the recess appointment as a way to circumvent Republican delays are disingenuous at best.

Of course, recess appointments have been made before by Presidents of both parties.  But this has almost always been done after hearings and after the opposing party has actually engaged in some sort of obstruction or delaying tactics.  A pre-emptive recess appointment by a President whose party deliberately shielded the candidate from public scrutiny is a different animal altogether.  It should be nothing less than disgraceful from a political leader who pledged on the record  that:

"My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government.  We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government."

Deliberately avoinding hearings through back-door appointments does nothing to earn the public's trust.  In fact, it should have the affect of making us all very, very wary.