Our New Obamacare Masters

Meet the Independent Payment Advisory Board.
Nov 20, 2010
By WESLEY J. SMITH

The day after the Obama administration’s shellacking at the polls, Peter Orszag, former director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, defended Obamacare from the ramparts of the New York Times. Dubiously asserting that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is a money saver, Orszag extolled the establishment of an arcane new commission to oversee the Medicare budget:

Perhaps most important, the legislation creates an Independent Payment Advisory Board, a panel of independent medical experts who will look for more ways to improve Medicare’s cost-effectiveness. Under the law, any policy that the board issues takes effect unless legislation to block it is passed by Congress and signed by the president. This way, inertia works in favor of cost containment rather than against it.

In other words, the only way to stop the commission’s fiscal “recommendations” from taking effect is for Congress to act. Talk about creating a new level of raw bureaucratic power. the rest

Further demonstrating the Star Chamber-like powers of the Independent Payment Advisory Board, Congress cannot consider any bill or amendment that would repeal or change this fast-track congressional consideration process without a three-fifths vote (60) in the Senate. Not only that, but the implementation of the board’s remedy is exempted from administrative or judicial review.