Second House panel clears bill to repeal Medicare board

[JoeChalupa]

http://thehill.com/blogs/healthwatch/health-reform-implementation/214935-ways-and-means-clears-bill-to-ax-health-laws-cost-cutting-board

A second House committee agreed by voice vote Thursday to repeal a key cost-cutting board in President Obama’s healthcare law.

The Ways and Means Committee voted to repeal the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), a 15-member panel tasked with cutting Medicare payments to doctors. The Energy and Commerce Committee passed the same repeal bill earlier this week.

Republicans say the IPAB invests too much power in unelected experts and could lead to rationing. Democrats note that the panel is expressly prohibited from cutting Medicare benefits or increasing costs for seniors. It can only cut payments to doctors.

Leadership is hoping to have the IPAB repeal bill on the floor around the same time the Supreme Court begins hearing oral arguments over the healthcare law. Those proceedings are set to begin March 26.

The Obama administration has aggressively defended the IPAB, saying it’s one of the most important cost-control features in the healthcare law and contrasting it with Republican-led proposals to at least partially privatize the program.

~~~I expect to see more votes such as these in the months to come.

[JohnnyMarzetti]

This news is all over twitter.

[101A]

http://thehill.com/blogs/healthwatch/health-reform-implementation/214935-ways-and-means-clears-bill-to-ax-health-laws-cost-cutting-board

A second House committee agreed by voice vote Thursday to repeal a key cost-cutting board in President Obama’s healthcare law.

The Ways and Means Committee voted to repeal the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), a 15-member panel tasked with cutting Medicare payments to doctors. The Energy and Commerce Committee passed the same repeal bill earlier this week.

Republicans say the IPAB invests too much power in unelected experts and could lead to rationing. Democrats note that the panel is expressly prohibited from cutting Medicare benefits or increasing costs for seniors. It can only cut payments to doctors.

Leadership is hoping to have the IPAB repeal bill on the floor around the same time the Supreme Court begins hearing oral arguments over the healthcare law. Those proceedings are set to begin March 26.

The Obama administration has aggressively defended the IPAB, saying it’s one of the most important cost-control features in the healthcare law and contrasting it with Republican-led proposals to at least partially privatize the program.

~~~I expect to see more votes such as these in the months to come.

....Googling where the bulk of AMA donations have gone...

[101A]

That panel's rulings could have far flung effects to lower healthcare costs; many provider contract use Medicare allowable as a basis. In the current system; a panel such as that is necessary to get costs under control. Of course the most important letter of the acronym IPAB is the "I". Without that, failure.

[boutons_deux]

Repugs are really defending the exorbitant prices and profits of the health care industry, behind the LIE of saying IPAB would have too much control (it would of course and in any case be corrupted by health lobbyists), with double whammy of blindly opposing, trying to weaken, destroy, anything Hussein and the Dems pass.

How you can you assholes be so naive as to believe the Repugs' LIE about why they want to kill IPAB?