On the recordJuly 12, 2010
I rise to discuss the appointment by President Obama of Dr. Donald Berwick as Administrator of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services. I disagree, respectfully, with my distinguished colleague from Arizona. I guess I agree that it is regrettable that this was a recess appointment, but I believe that on the part of the President it was both prudent and necessary to make this a recess appointment, given, A, the urgency of moving forward with health care reform and, B, the relentless blockade the Republicans have maintained. Dr. Berwick is perhaps the most qualified person in the country to wield the vast apparatus of the Federal health care bureaucracy toward the comprehensive change we need, to lower the cost of health care, while improving the quality of health care. In evaluating this urgency, I ask my colleague to consider the situation we are in right now. We are in the midst of an accelerating and unsustainable rise in health care expenditures in America. In 1955--the year I was born--we spent a little bit over $12 billion a year on health care. That was the annual health care expenditure in the United States in 1955--$12 billion. Last year, we spent more than $2.5 trillion. The increase over the previous year was $134 billion--from 2008 to 2009, an increase of $134 billion, which is the largest year-to-year increase in history, by the way, and 200 times what we spent in 1955--200 times.
