FSM HOT TOPICS
The Obamacare Hydra
by MICHELLE MALKIN March 23, 2012
On Thursday, as the behemoth federal health care law marked its second anniversary, House Republicans repealed the infamous Independent Payment Advisory Board. The mother of all death panels, IPAB would have unprecedented authority over health care spending through a rogue board of 15 Medicare spending czars. The House repeal has a snowball's chance in hell of surviving the Senate. But IPAB's legality is being challenged in federal court by the conservative Arizona-based Goldwater Institute. And the more the public knows about these freedom-usurping, taxpayer-soaking institutions buried in the health care law the less they like it.
Seven House Democrats crossed the aisle to vote for the GOP majority rollback. Analysts on both sides of the political aisle have decried IPAB's complete lack of accountability and insulation from judicial review. Critical decisions about public and private health insurance payment rates would be freed from the normal administrative rules process - public notice, public comment, public review -- that governs every other federal commission in existence. Rep. Todd Akin, R-Mo., summed up bipartisan opposition: "IPAB embodies the very thing Americans fear most about ObamaCare -- unaccountable Washington bureaucrats meeting behind closed doors to make unilateral decisions that should be made by patients and their doctors."
The problem with piecemeal repeal is that for every old IPAB, there's a new, multibillion-dollar bureaucracy waiting in the Obamacare wings. Senate Republicans and fellow medical doctors Tom Coburn and John Barrasso point to a $10 billion entity called the "Innovation Center" that "would test innovative payment and service delivery models to reduce program expenditures under Medicare, Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP).
According to a new Congressional Research Service analysis of this little-known office to be operated by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, there would be "no administrative or judicial review" of the director's payment experiments. Coburn and Barrasso explain that "(t)his means that the administrator of CMS is the sole individual in the entire federal government with the power to decide whether or not models tested negatively impact seniors' quality of care and meet the financial requirements spelled out in law."
This "innovation" super-czar would be allowed to tinker behind closed doors -- and then impose whatever experiments the "innovation center" chooses without any checks or balances on the methods or results. Moreover, at least two other sub-offices within CMS (subject to normal open meetings and open records rules) have already been tasked with researching payment and delivery models. Health care blogger Tevi Troy at NationalReview.com warns: "The 'innovation' center appears to be one more way in which the health-care law is going to interfere with the practice of medicine, and one that physicians should start paying more attention to."
It's not just physicians who need to pay attention. Every taxpayer has a stake. At the end of the month, this shadowy agency will start doling out $1 billion in grants to payment experiment groups and data-tracking system builders. Sounds like yet another pipeline for political payoffs and Chicago-style boodle that will result in less patient autonomy, fewer health care choices, more government intrusion and lower-quality care.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Michelle Malkin is the author of Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks & Cronies (Regnery 2009). Her e-mail address is malkinblog@gmail.com.
Join FSM and stay informed. Get your daily Security Update delivered each day to your e-mail.
Bill Maher: Don't you dare lower the legal blood alcohol limit, you nanny-staters!
May 19, 2013 08:38 PM
So lowering the blood alcohol limit is an unacceptable intrusion by the Nanny State (even though doing so probably would save lives). Gun control, on the other hand, is positively wonderful (even though the right to bear arms, unlike the right to drive, is protected by the U.S. Constitution): And nationalizing one-seventh of the economy in the name […]
May 19, 2013 07:36 PM
No one is arguing that Acevdeo doesn't enjoy the same First Amendment rights as other citizens. The point is simply that it is unseemly for a high-ranking public official to address critics in such a harsh, vitriolic manner. 
‘We will not go gently': Mia Love officially announces 2014 congressional run
May 19, 2013 06:30 PM
Saratoga Springs, Utah, mayor Mia Love narrowly lost to Democrat Jim Matheson in Utah’s 4th congressional district in 2012. But she’s back again, hoping to win in 2014. Her supporters took to Twitter to wish her well and pledge their support: Now @MiaBLove up to standing applause. #Utpol #utgop— Daniel Burton (@PubliusDB) May 18, 2013 Mayor […]
Rupert Murdoch: Boost charitable giving by scrapping the charitable deduction
May 19, 2013 05:58 PM
That’s what Murdoch tweeted in response to a question from Newsday’s Josh Greenman about getting rid of the charitable deduction. Greenman’s question was prompted by Murdoch’s logic-challenged tweet yesterday linking the IRS scandal to the need for a flat tax and elimination of all deductions. We suspect that the number of major charitable organizations supporting Murdoch’s […]
Chicago Teacher's Union marches to protest school closures
May 19, 2013 05:29 PM
That’s right. It’s OK for the “educators” in the Chicago Teacher’s Union to shut down schools and endanger kids left abandoned to streets, but it’s murder when Chicago mayor Rahm Emmanuel tries to shut down schools (most of them poor performers) to keep the district solvent. Most Chicago public schools are awful, and teachers earn $76,000 […]
FSM Archives
blog comments powered by Disqus