Cheaper.
how so?
Cheaper.
I think you've got it wrong.
I submit for your consideration, The Congressional Research Service who, according to their website, ...
From the Congressional Research Service memo to Senator Tom Coburn....works exclusively for the United States Congress, providing policy and legal analysis to committees and Members of both the House and Senate, regardless of party affiliation. As a legislative branch agency within the Library of Congress, CRS has been a valued and respected resource on Capitol Hill for more than a century.
CRS is well-known for analysis that is authoritative, confidential, objective and nonpartisan. Its highest priority is to ensure that Congress has 24/7 access to the nation’s best thinking.
This website provides information about our organization, career opportunities and our services to Congress.
See footnotes at link:
So, to summarize."The Independent Advisory Board was established by Sections 3403 and 10320 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The IPAB is charged by that law by that law with developing proposals to 'reduce the per capita rate of growth in Medicare Spending.' The Act lays out detailed criteria related to Medicare spending which would trigger a requirement that the IPAB submit recommendations to both Congress and the President, accompanied by, among other things, implementing legislation.
"Under the mechanism created by the Act, the Secretary of Health and Human Services must implement the IPAB's legislative proposals unless Congress affirmatively acts to amend or block them within a stated period of time and under cir stances specified in the Act.
"Section 3403(d) of the Act establishes special 'fast track' parliamentary procedures governing House and Senate committee consideration, and Senate floor consideration, of legislation implementing the IPAB proposal. These procedures differ from the parliamentary mechanisms the chambers customarily use to consider most legislation and are designed to ensure that Congress can act promptly on the implementing legislation, should it choose to do so. It accomplishes this goal by mandating the immediate introduction of the legislation in Congress; establishing strict deadlines for committee and Senate floor consideration; and placing certain limits on the amending process. The procedures established by the Act permit Congress to amend the IPAB-implementing legislation, but only in a manner that achieves at least the same level of targeted reductions in Medicare spending growth as are contained in teh IPAB plan. The Act bars Congress from changing the IPAB fiscal targets in any other legislation it considers as well, and establishes procedures whereby a super-majority vote is required in the Senate to waive this requirement."
The IPAB writes the proposal and legislation to reduce costs.
The HHS Secretary MUST implement unless Congress AFFIRMATIVELY acts to amend or block.
Congress MUST fast track the legislation and consider it under special rules, also written into the law.
Congress can't change the amount of the cuts.
Congress can't change the rules without a super majority.
If Congress doesn't act fast enough, it become law anyway and we're back to the HHS Secretary MUST implement.
So we're in agreement.
- Congress can change what the proposed cuts are (as long as the cuts amount to the same savings)
- Congress can chuck the proposal entirely with a supermajority vote
- This is from a proposal that already "shall not include any recommendation to ration health care, raise revenues or Medicare beneficiary premiums under section 1818, 1818A, or 1839, increase Medicare beneficiary cost sharing (including deductibles, coinsurance, and co-payments), or otherwise restrict benefits or modify eligibility criteria."
I don't know what 'fast enough' even means. The proposal is submitted in January every year, and Congress has until August to act... that's 8 months (2/3 of the year). If they can't get in agreement by then, whose fault is it?
I just don't get you. You because of runaway social spending, but then when you actually get a system in place that mandates Congress to actually yearly review and apply cuts in social spending, you complain too.
I mean, I understand Congress has been a free for all of ing and moaning until now, but well, maybe it's time they get to work.
Yeah, because when funding is reduced they take it from the administrative side of the equation.
Good luck getting a super majority in this Congress or any Congress in the near future.
That is a mathematical impossibility. To make any meaningful cuts in any social spending requires that you reduce benefits. That's where the bulk of the money goes.
[QUOTE=ElNono;7670671]I don't know what 'fast enough' even means. The proposal is submitted in January every year, and Congress has until August to act... that's 8 months (2/3 of the year). If they can't get in agreement by then, whose fault is it?
I'm all for cutting spending in social programs, it's this fantasy that it can be done without hurting the recipients that's bugging me. There are other social programs that could be cut before you start mucking up Medicare.
I guess we'll just have to wait and see how bad the government can this up, too.
I think the IPAB is just a mechanism by which Congress can, one again, avoid their responsibility over the purse.
Congress can switch to reduce funding from anywhere they want. There's no constrains about the switcheroo they can do. They do need to keep the savings level but they don't need a supermajority to do that.
And if the proposal are going to be so bad, as you seem to imply, then getting a supermajority for that vote shouldn't be that much of a problem, I don't think. I mean, "don't touch my Medicare" is a pretty uniform call-sign from both parties' voters.
But the law doesn't require to make "meaningful cuts" all at once. The law required for the panel to review and see where they can make progressive cuts on a yearly basis without reducing benefits, etc. ie: they can just recommend Medicare stops paying $20 for gauze, and pay $10 instead. You could argue those little cuts are not "meaningful" (and I would agree), but they're cuts, and they add up over time, especially given the scope of medicare.
There's not going to be meaningful cost cutting with ACA, because it did not address costs. I mean, this is actually a tiny part of the law that attempts to do some of that, but you can see it's extremely limited.
Actual, meaningful cost cutting will have to come with an amendment at another time. You suggest that recipients should be the ones bearing the brunt of that cost reduction. I personally think service providers should, in light of pricing for the same services all around the world. Ideally, I guess it's somewhere in the middle. But ACA dodged that entirely.
Congress always has the ultimate weapon: the budget. They can just make their own cuts through (lack of) funding for Medicare overall. This panel's proposals don't preempt that, AFAIK.
But, wait, there's more!
Obama was supposedly in the room and helped develop the "Cadillac Tax" lie.
This is just getting better.
Costs equals premium + Out-of-Pocket, which made healthcare overall more expensive in the past.
Yoni certainly is enraptured by obvious political theater.
lol this dude basically calls anyone that supported/supports obamacare a ing idiot and the demorats still defend him
Blind obedience from the demorats. It's amazing, really.
I know. It certainly is dramatic when you got someone going around bragging about how he and the President plotted to and in fact did lie to everyone to get support for an experimental wide reaching health care law.
Oh Boy: In Jon Gruber's Newest (Sixth) Video, He Explains How Obama and Democrats Conspired to Get Rid of Tax Exemptions for All Insurance Plans Without Anyone Noticing
Obamacare architect in 6th video: 'Mislabeling' helped us get rid of tax breaks
The guy who's been finding these said that the worst was yet to come.
As if only one side deliberately misleads the public. I don't think you will find many Obama supporters around here anyway.
is his name seriously shekel gruber? what a literal ing slimeball piece of , dude needs to get ed by a sawed off and kill himself. i'm so mother ing sick of the left those ing traitorous cancerous sons of es.
It's really worse than that. Now the likes of Pelosi claim they never heard of him, after being taped talking about him.
it's just political theatre
msnbc told me so
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You seriously do not think this has anything to do with the legislative push that the GOP has gearing up?
I don't watch MSNBC or any TV news for that matter. How would you know what they say there btw or are you just assuming that a dissenting view to the GOP comes from there?
Here is the RNC's attempt at a twitter campaign. They even have hashtags for it.
I mean nevermind that what he was talking about it regarding it being a tax was out of the bag in Roberts ruling last year. *gasp* 'Cadillac plans' was a buzzword generated like a marketing slogan. *swoon*
I actually think it's funny that they have this guy spelling it out like his audience is a bunch of simpletons. Thing is that I realized it was political theater back then too.
And FWIW, I think that Pelosi, Reid, and Schumer are s just like the RNC guys you support.
The Republicans didn't make those videos, or those comments. I mean, he's basically calling you(supporters of obamacare) stupid, and telling you that he and the president conspired to lie to the American people, and somehow this is Republican propaganda?
What is this? I don't even...
Fact is there wouldn't be anything for republicans to make hay over if Grubber wasn't going around ing the football and giving Americans the middle finger.
The "Hitler finds out ... " meme never gets old.
I found the video on the GOP's front page and the author of the youtube is GOP.com. He stated that they knew it was a tax but that was laid forth over a year ago by the Supreme Court in the landmark case.
IT IS NOT NEW INFORMATION.
As I said before, the Dems were saying that it wasn't a tax and that it wasn't unfairly burdening younger citizens like a bunch of lying pieces of just like the GOP was making up stories about death panels and the destruction of the insurance industry.
The large swathes of the US electorate are a bunch of simpletons. The GOP are masters at harnessing their indignation and have been since before they switched parties.
We get it. He made those videos a long time ago. He's not saying anything that hasn't been debated. You think the GOP is cynically bringing this up now.
Two problems with that reasoning.
1. Some things deserve attention even though they've been on the internet for a while. Sometimes it takes time for people to find and realize the significance of something.
2. There is a whole of a lot of difference between lawyers stating their opinion about what they think a law was intended to do, and one of the authors of that bill flat out stating what it's purpose was and how it was meant to deceive others.
These videos haven't been out for that long. The GOP sat on them until the eve of the upcoming legislative session at which point they 'surfaced.' Did it occur to you to ask how long they have been sitting on them? For example some of the footage is from 2011 when the law was still in question. Did they have them then? You don't even consider that but when it arrives in slick packaging and a twitter campaign you eat it whole.
The Supreme Court is not a 'lawyer.' Roberts flat out said in his majority decision that despite what the dems were saying, the mandate per se was a tax relative to the cons ution. They are the arbiters of what is what when it comes to the law of the land. Their job is to cut through all the bull and arrive at the truth. They rule by definition. It was even a conservative chief justice that laid it out for us.
So your contention is that it takes over two years to realize that inflammatory commentary like an economist calling the US electorate 'stupid' was newsworthy? gmafb. It's so obviously contrived it's saddening. The issue here is an elite calling the electorate stupid and the insecurity that it resonates with. It's the exact same tactic the southern gentry used to align poor white sharecroppers to side with them politically against uppity 'yankees' and the like. The funny thing is that the modern analog to indentured workers in 5 figure republicans go for the exact same bait from people who think you are just as stupid as the damn yankee does.
The decision was 5-4 and the SCOTUS is not an infallible arbitrator of truth. It once said slavery was A-ok. It often reverses itself due to nothing more than pure political pressure (the Roosevelt Court). The fact it ruled Obamacare was a tax does not mean it is so any more than it means a corporation is a person.
Why is Bill Cosby's sexual assault history back in the news? How is that relevant to 2014? It happens because things happen and get exposure. You seem to think the "press" or whatever is all over any bit of news the second it happens, and if they don't break it within a week then obviously it's irrelevant. Please.
As for your civil war rhetoric. WTH?
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