Bloomberg is reporting that President Obama has chosen current Harvard professor in health policy, Donald Berwick, to be in charge of overseeing the Medicare/Medicaid programs en lieu of the health care bill that passed. Berwick is 63 years old and, if appointed, would be responsible for programs that affect over 100 million people. The position requires a confirmation via the senate, thus the appointment is not set in stone. The article notes that “He would be the first permanent administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services, since physician Mark McClellan left the position in October 2006. He would lead the department through the implementation of Obama’s $940 billion, decade-long push to cover 32 million uninsured Americans and make medicine more cost-effective.” In addition to being a professor of health policy here at Harvard, Berwick also practices medicine at Boston Children’s Medical Hospital and Mass Gen. Hospital.

“The Washington Post,” reports that Harvard University Law professor Laurence Tribe, who once hired Barack Obama as a research assistant, is now set to join the Justice Department with the aim of leading projects towards opening up greater legal access to the impoverished. Tribe is a well-known figure in the legal community: he has been before the Supreme Court 35 times, for example. We wish Tribe, who is now 68 years old and is a tenured professor at Harvard (since the age of 29) the best of luck!