In this week’s cover story, we noted that one of the biggest challenges for the Obama Administration in implementing the new health care law is:

… filling key posts in the Executive Branch that remain empty more than 14 months after Obama was inaugurated. After all, there will be thousands and thousands of new regulations to be written and administered. But no one has yet been named to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the huge agency that runs those two programs. And Senate Republicans have held up the nomination of Columbia University professor Sherry Glied for the important post of Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation at the Department of Health and Human Services. Congressman George Miller, chairman of the House Committee on Education and Labor, grouses that the Administration “is going to have to be more aggressive. They have not been aggressive enough on the appointments process.”

Today, the NYT’s Robert Pear reports the Administration has settled on someone to run the agency that runs Medicare and Medicaid. The early reviews are good: