Free Republic

Over 500 organizations are calling on Congress to repeal a Medicare cost-cutting board that is part of ObamaCare. The panel at issue is called the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), and is charged with coming up with ways to cut Medicare spending. Legislation to repeal the board sponsored by Reps. Phil Roe (R-Tenn.) and Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.) has 222 co-sponsors, including 19 Democrats. While some opponents of ObamaCare have called the IPAB a “death panel,” the board is banned by law from recommending changes that would ration care or require seniors to pay a higher share of costs. Its reforms...

... Regardless of whether you're a supporter or opponent of Obamacare, you may have missed an important "ruling" from the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this week that resulted in Obamacare logging a key victory. The case, Coons vs. Lew, was initially brought to court in 2011 by business owner Nick Coons and orthopedic surgeon Dr. Eric Novack. The two, with the help of additional legal backing, alleged that the Independent Payment Advisory Board, or IPAB, would trim Medicare costs and potentially hurt their business by instituting reimbursement levels that wouldn't cover their own expenses. These allegations are where the term...

The Supreme Court today decided it will not hear a lawsuit challenging the death panels in Obamacare that pro-life groups strongly opposed because they involve rationing health care and potentially denying lifesaving medical treatment — putting patients’ right to life at risk.Previously, one of the leading national pro-life groups called for legislation to repeal the Independent Payment Advisory Board established by the controversial Obamacare legislation because of pro-life concerns about it.“Repeal of the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) is critical to prevent the rationing of life-saving medical treatment,” said Burke Balch, J.D., director of National Right to Life’s Robert Powell...

When John R. Ammon, M.D. finished his rigorous training at Harvard and Stanford 36 years ago, he swore to uphold the all important Hippocratic Oath – which proclaims – “Do No Harm.” Looking forward to working as an anesthesiologist, he believed he would never have to compromise that solemn promise. Yet, for Dr. Ammon, as for so many hundreds of thousands of physicians, that oath is progressively more difficult to keep. Dr. Ammon has spent a lifetime of serving and healing his patients. More than just participating in a practice, his personal belief systems made him keenly aware of –...

At least 1,000 hospital patients are dying needlessly each month from dehydration and poor care by doctors and nurses, according to a NHS study. The deaths from acute kidney injury could be prevented by simple steps such as nurses ensuring patients have enough to drink and doctors reviewing their medication, the researchers say. Between 15,000 and 40,000 patients die annually because hospital staff fail to diagnose the treatable kidney problem, a figure that dwarfs the death toll from superbugs like MRSA. The report comes less than a year after the NHS watchdog NICE was forced to issue guidelines on giving...

Ezekiel Emanuel—Rahm’s older brother and the man who, as far back as 2009, current Nebraska Senate candidate Ben Sasse warned was “quarterbacking the details” of Obamacare—has authored a New York Times op-ed in which he criticizes the proposed alternative released last week by Senators Coburn, Burr, and Hatch. Emanuel, a rather feisty fellow (see his Fox News exchange with Jim Capretta—during which he admitted that, under Obamacare, the “individual market is going away”), has written some, well, provocative things about what he calls the “allocation of scarce medical interventions.” For example, he’d prioritize the lives of the young over the...

First they said it was about end-of-life counseling, now they say it's about rationing. And it could be making a triumphant return. Now that Healthcare.gov seems to be working reasonably well (at least on the consumer end), Republicans are going to have to find something else they can focus on in their endless war against the Affordable Care Act. So get ready for the return of "death panels." They never really went away. Those who aren't immersed in the fantasy world in which conservatives move were reminded of that last week, when chronicler of changed games Mark Halperin, the embodiment...

This is a great interview with Michael Cannon as he explains how IPAB will ration care by reducing what Medicare spends on health care. This coming after Mark Halperin agreed (before walking it back on twitter) that death panels are in fact baked into Obamacare because the IPAB has the ability ration care. Cannon explains that IPAB being able to set Medicare prices (what they pay the doctor or hospital) IS the power to ration care and that the prohibition in Obamacare against rationing care is toothless. And there’s much more. Watch:

For three years the left have railed against Sarah Palin, ridiculing the former Governor’s claims of Death Panels operating within the Affordable Care Act. But Sarah has at last been vindicated. The Oregon Health Authority (OHA)–the state agency which is bringing Oregon health plans into line with ObamaCare mandates–is promoting a guideline which states that “…treatment with intent to prolong survival is not a covered service for patients who have progressive metastatic cancer and are...

THE BRIEFING ROOM • THE BLOG THE BLOG TUESDAY, AUGUST 4TH, 2009 AT 6:55 AM Facts Are Stubborn Things Posted by Macon Phillips Opponents of health insurance reform may find the truth a little inconvenient, but as our second president famously said, "facts are stubborn things." Scary chain emails and videos are starting to percolate on the internet, breathlessly claiming, for example, to "uncover" the truth about the President’s health insurance reform positions. In this video, Linda Douglass, the communications director for the White House’s Health Reform Office, addresses one example that makes it look like the President intends to...

When Congress debated Obamacare, pro-life advocates and Republicans like Sarah Palin were castigated for claiming the government-run health care program would include death panels that would ration health care treatment. Now, former presidential candidate Howard Dean has essentially admitted they were right and is calling for the repeal of the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB). In a Wall Street Journal op-ed Monday he called the IPAB “essentially a health-care rationing body” that he believes will fail. “There does have to be control of costs in our health-care system. However, rate setting — the essential mechanism of the IPAB — has...

Experience tells me the Independent Payment Advisory Board will fail... --snip-- There does have to be control of costs in our health-care system. However, rate setting—the essential mechanism of the IPAB—has a 40-year track record of failure. What ends up happening in these schemes (which many states including my home state of Vermont have implemented with virtually no long-term effect on costs) is that patients and physicians get aggravated because bureaucrats in either the private or public sector are making medical decisions without knowing the patients. Most important, once again, these kinds of schemes do not control costs. The medical...

One of the most politically intense fights over the Affordable Care Act was over the creation of the Independent Payment Advisory Board, infamously dubbed a "death panel" by Republicans during the 2010 elections. On Thursday, Republican House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell signaled that they would keep working to keep opposition alive by doing everything they can to impede the board's implementation. The two leaders wrote a letter to President Barack Obama, notifying him that they would not be submitting any recommendations to the panel because of their opposition to it and to the law in...

Under President Obama’s 2010 health law, the government officials in charge of keeping Medicaid afloat have until Tuesday to report whether costs for the fiscally foundering program will exceed expectations. But they won’t have anywhere to send their report. That’s because the Independent Payment Advisory Board – perhaps the most controversial entity created under Obama’s law – still doesn’t exist. This 15-member board, denounced by critics as a “death panel,” is tasked under the law with determining which patients ought to receive which treatments and whether taxes ought to be raised to finance the program. The board has been the...

When a member of Congress introduces legislation, the Constitution requires that legislative proposal to secure the approval of the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the president (unless Congress overrides a presidential veto) before it can become law. In all cases, either chamber of Congress may block it. In 2010, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) created the Independent Payment Advisory Board, or IPAB. When the unelected government officials on this board submit a legislative proposal to Congress, it automatically becomes law: PPACA requires the Secretary of Health and Human Services to implement it. Blocking an IPAB "proposal"...

Though few Americans are aware of it, the unconscionable ObamaCare ruling of Chief Justice John Roberts stands to provide Barack Hussein Obama unlimited and fundamentally irrevocable power less than 2 years after the November election. For should he win, Obama will acquire the “legal” authority to select 15 individuals whose word will automatically become the law of the land. Within the 2500 pages of the comically-named Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is cached the 2014 establishment of the Independent Payment Advisory Board. Nominated exclusively by the president, the 15 members of the Board will ostensibly be tasked with “…prevent[ing]...

"While we strongly advocate the provision of care for the millions of uninsured Americans who will benefit from the legislation, we are concerned that there are key aspects to this law that will, ultimately, hurt this nation’s ability to provide widespread care for its citizens," the statement said. "Since the PPACA was passed in 2010, organizations representing urologists nationwide have been working with lawmakers and regulators to demonstrate how certain provisions of the PPACA—including the establishment of the Independent Payment Advisory Board [IPAB] and the value-based modifier—will negatively impact physicians’ ability to provide quality care to patients. Though we applaud...

Today, the Cato Institute releases a new study by Diane Cohen and me (me as in the co-author of the study, not the one posting this executive summary on FR) titled, “The Independent Payment Advisory Board: PPACA’s Anti-Constitutional and Authoritarian Super-Legislature.” Cohen is a senior attorney at the Goldwater Institute and lead counsel in the Coons v. Geithner lawsuit challenging IPAB and other aspects of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, a.k.a. ObamaCare. From the executive summary: When the unelected government officials on this board submit a legislative proposal to Congress, it automatically becomes law: PPACA requires...

For weeks now, the nation has been riveted by arguments in the U.S. Supreme Court over one provision of the Affordable Care Act. Does the law's requirement that every adult buy health insurance violate the U.S. Constitution? We think it does not. Yet even if the court ultimately shares that view, the federal health care reform law will face monumental hurdles to be successfully implemented. The biggest of these is its cost. Can the nation afford to insure all its citizens? If we don't get a handle on rising health care costs the answer to that more important question is...

March 21, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Concerns over the new health care law’s system for rationing health care - famously dubbed the “death panels” by Sarah Palin - have been reinforced by a former head of the American Medical Association, who said the advisory panels “will essentially mean rationed care” for the elderly. Former AMA President Donald Palmisano wrote in a Daily Caller column Monday that the Independent Payment Advisory Boards (IPAB), tasked with keeping Medicare expenses under control, would have little oversight as they deal with the disproportionate cost burden from seniors with greater medical needs. “The 15 officials who...