Wednesday, July 1, 2015

The Powerful and Evil Central Planning Board Inside Obamacare

Without some evil medical "decider" board to determine who should get what treatments, Obamacare costs would soar completely out of control. Inside Obmamacare that medical decider board is officially known as the  Independent Payment Advisory Board.

It's pure central planning, where a government board decides how to ration medical care.

WSJ explains:
ObamaCare’s central planners knew that subsidies and “free” health care would drive up health costs, so they hyped various cost-control gimmicks that will make little difference if they work at all. But IPAB is supposed to be the killer app. Peter Orszag and the Obamateers designed it to be insulated from politicians in Congress who might object if the bureaucracy restricts breakthrough but expensive treatments.
Congress and the President would have to agree to an alternative cost-cutting proposal to overrule an IPAB decision. If Congress doesn’t repeal IPAB during a seven-month window in 2017, not even an agreement by Congress and the President will be able to supercede the board’s rulings after 2019.
Initially, IPAB is supposed to limit Medicare spending to a measure of inflation. After 2017 the target is the nominal per capita growth rate of the economy plus one percentage point. These targets will get harder to hit as baby boomers age and more advanced treatments come online for chronic conditions like Alzheimer’s.
ObamaCare putatively forbids IPAB from rationing or restricting care. But to adapt Humpty Dumpty, rationing means what IPAB chooses it to mean. As progressive single-payer champion Howard Dean explained in these pages (“The Affordable Care Act’s Rate-Setting Won’t Work,” July 28, 2013), IPAB will de facto determine which procedures and drugs get covered by setting reimbursement rates. IPAB will be able to restrict treatments by reducing rates to levels at which no doctor could provide care.
 -RW

2 comments:

  1. People have a far greater degree of control over their physical well being in many instances than ever before, but they must be willing to seize that control for themselves, and not silently succumb to the heard mentality so many people are afflicted with today.

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  2. "Killer app." Interesting choice of words there... I recommend folks familiarize themselves with the book "Where there is no Doctor."

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