There isn't enough lipstick in Washington to pretty-up Obamacare's so-called "death panel." Or to hide the dangers it poses to seniors in 2015.
More formally called the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), this panel of 15 unelected bureaucrats will be empowered -- no, instructed -- to find $500 billion in cuts to Medicare over a decade.
When IPAB officials recommend their cuts, the cuts become law, unless a supermajority in Congress vetoes the board's proposal and creates its own cost-cutting proposal. Can you see that happening even in the most harmonious of political times? Neither can I.
And here's the rub: Unless the Affordable Health Care Act -- the whole of Obamacare -- is repealed, in three years IPAB will go into effect, even if some of the act's parts have been surgically removed. It means Americans will be stuck with a law that rations coverage for the elderly like never before.
In a telephone interview last week, Larry Hart of the American Conservative Union told me, "Even though IPAB isn't in the Supreme Court, it's more at the heart of the Affordable Care Act than the mandate is. It's more frightening."
Hart, the ACU's Washington director of government relations, acknowledged that the House of Representatives voted three weeks ago to repeal IPAB -- but that didn't matter a hoot.
"It was largely symbolic," he said. "House members wanted their condemnation on the record, but repeal isn't going any further in this Congress. The Senate agenda is completely in the hands of (Majority Leader) Harry Reid."
Outspoken Reid critic Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, agrees, saying the majority leader refuses to bring a budget resolution to the floor in order to protect Senate Democrats from having to cast a series of difficult election-year votes on amendments to the unpopular health care bill.
"The thing he doesn't want is to see his incumbents fighting for their political lives over Obamacare," says Sessions. In the House, repeal of IPAB won the support of seven Democrats, and at one point it had as many as 20 Democratic co-sponsors.
The budgetless Senate is in recess until April 16.
Said the ACU's Hart, "What the House vote did was to call attention to the worst features of Obamacare. The Affordable Health Care Act is a 2,400-page bill. Much of it is devoted to giving huge power to the secretary of Health and Human Services and bodies like IPAB."
And, by the way, salaries for IPAB members start at $165,300; for the chairman, $179,700; and for employees up to $145,700 plus travel and expenses.
Hart stopped short of calling IPAB a "death panel" as others have. But he said he did consider it a legal and moral monstrosity.
I agree completely, and so does Dean Clancy of FreedomWorks, a national grassroots organization "working for lower taxes, less government and more freedom." Here's a summation of Clancy's point of view, which appeared in FoxNews.com:
This unelected board is poison for patients. Medicare reimbursement rates are already low, and cutting them more will lead to rationing and care denials.
It's poison for doctors and hospitals. Health care providers will have to choose between seeing fewer Medicare patients or going bankrupt. Some may actually do both, Clancy says. Medicare has estimated that IPAB's 10-year cuts will put 15 percent of America's hospitals out of business.
It's not democratic. Every cut IPAB decides carries the force of law unless, as I said earlier, Congress overrides with a two-thirds majority. Cuts cannot be reviewed in any court. Period.
It's not accountable and it's prone to corruption. The work of these unelected IPAB members is exempt from sunshine laws. Meanwhile, it "may accept, use, and dispose of gifts or donations of services or property." You don't think health-industry lobbyists aren't licking their chops over that one right now?
Its budget isn't subjected to congressional scrutiny. Unlike other government agencies, IPAB's operating budget is exempt from annual congressional review. It's comes straight out of Medicare trust funds.
It isn't constitutional. Clancy calls IPAB an "unconstitutional trifecta -- an executive agency wielding legislative power that is immune to judicial oversight." Founding Father James Madison called that situation "the very definition of tyranny."
Hart claims that with Reid in control of the Senate, not a whole lot can be done this year to repeal IPAB.
I asked him what options we have.
"Only one," he said. "Elect a new Congress and a new president. Put the people in office in 2012 who will repeal IPAB.
"Don't wait for 2015 to be upon us, do it now."
Hart is right. Sessions is right. A raft of Republican senators like Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., is right. IPAB has to go. We need a common-sense Congress and president.
Without that, America's senior citizens and the network that serves them are three years away from unimaginable mayhem.
Reach Nancy Smith at nsmith@sunshinestatenews.com or at (850) 727-0859.
