Obamacare Repeal: Senator Kyl Quotes WJS About IPAB Danger

Senator Jon Kyl quotes yours truly in a column criticizing the Independent Payment Advisory Board, about which I wrote in the Weekly Standard, could well become the cornerstone for a new and unaccountable bureaucratic state.  From Kyle’s column in the Arizona Capitol Times, “‘We,’ the Experts:”

But it’s not just the process that’s a problem. There’s something more troubling.  As Wesley J. Smith wrote in an article entitled, “Our New ObamaCare Masters,” “When the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution, they did not envisage governance by ‘we the experts.’”  True. So, contemplate the inevitable result of a new federal board of “experts” given the job of finding a certain dollar amount in cuts. While the law has language prohibiting the board from making recommendations to ration care, that is exactly what will happen. But, of course, cuts in seniors’ care won’t be called rationing. Instead, the likely approach, as in countries like Canada and Great Britain, is to delay doctors’ appointments, put some drugs and treatments off limits or rate allowable care by the life expectancy of the patient. The end result is a lower quality of health care – only that amount which will fit into the law’s “targets.” Because of all this, I have cosponsored “The Health Care Bureaucrats Elimination Act,” which will repeal the IPAB in its entirety.

Yes.  It is the IPAB’s autocratic power that must be stopped, not having a commission to recommend to Congress various ways to cut costs.

Sometimes in this work, it is tempting to think your efforts are sucked into a black hole from which no light escapes. It is heartening every time I find out that pessimistic whisper in my ear is wrong.