Obamacare’s Board of 15 Bureaucrats Tasked With Denying MediCare to Seniors

August 20, 2012

Democrat-Created Board of Bureaucrats Will Slash Payments for the Treatments Seniors Choose with Their Doctor

Democrats cut Medicare by more than $700 billion in order to pay for ObamaCare, and those cuts are already affecting benefits for today’s seniors.
Those cuts are going to get far worse for today’s seniors when a Democrat-created board of unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats starts enforcing these massive Medicare cuts by slashing reimbursements for the healthcare services seniors choose with their doctor.
If today’s seniors want an example of what cuts in reimbursement rates will do to access to healthcare for people on Medicare, they need only to look at what has happened to Medicaid. Medicaid patients can’t find doctors who will take them and often end up in the emergency room as a result.

Democrats cut Medicare by more than $700 billion in order to pay for ObamaCare, and those cuts are already affecting benefits for today’s seniors:

DEMOCRATS CUT MORE THAN $700 BILLION FROM MEDICARE TO PAY FOR OBAMACARE: (Douglas Elmendorf, “Letter to the Honorable John Boehner,” Congressional Budget Office, 7/24/2012)

OBAMA DEPUTY CAMPAIGN MANAGER STEPHANIE CUTTER TOUTED THE CUTS AS AN ‘ACHIEVEMENT: “You know I heard Mitt Romney deride the $700 billion cuts in Medicare that the president achieved through health care reform,’ said Cutter.” (Daniel Halper, “Obama Campaign Defends President’s $700 Billion Cuts to Medicare,” The Weekly Standard, 8/12/2012)

CBO: $156 BILLION IN CUTS TO MEDICARE ADVANTAGE, $20 BILLION HIGHER THAN FIRST ESTIMATE: (Douglas Elmendorf, “Letter to the Honorable John Boehner,” Congressional Budget Office, 7/24/2012)

MEDICARE ACTUARY: CURRENT SENIORS—AT LEAST 7.4 MILLION OF THEM—WILL LOSE MEDICARE ADVANTAGE DUE TO OBAMACARE: “The new provisions will generally reduce MA [Medicare Advantage] rebates to plans and thereby result in less generous benefit packages. We estimate that in 2017, when MA provisions will be fully phased in, enrollment in MA plans will be lower by about 50 percent (from its projected level of 14.8 million under the prior law to 7.4 million under the new law).” (Richard S. Foster, “Estimated Financial Effects of the ‘Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act as Amended,” Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, 4/22/2010)

CUTS TO MEDICARE ADVANTAGE WILL “CAUSE MILLIONS OF SENIOR CITIZENS AND DISABLED AMERICANS TO LOSE BILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN HEALTH CARE SERVICES”: “The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA)[1] will cause millions of senior citizens and disabled Americans to lose billions of dollars in health care services every year by substantially reducing payments to Medicare Advantage (MA) plans.” (Robert A. Book and James C. Capretta, “Reductions in Medicare Advantage Payments: The Impact on Seniors by Region,” The Heritage Foundation, 9/14/2010)

STUDY: CUTS WILL “FORCE SENIORS TO PAY $3,700 MORE FOR THEIR HEALTHCARE BY 2017”: (Robert A. Book and James C. Capretta, “Reductions in Medicare Advantage Payments: The Impact on Seniors by Region,” The Heritage Foundation, 9/14/2010; James Capretta, “President Obama’s $700 Billion Medicare Problem,” National Review, 8/15/2012)

Those cuts are going to get far worse for today’s seniors when a Democrat-created board of unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats starts enforcing these massive Medicare cuts by slashing reimbursements for the healthcare services seniors choose with their doctor:

UNDER OBAMACARE, DEMOCRATS EMPOWERED A BOARD OF BUREAUCRATS TO GUT MEDICARE:

“OBAMA BUDGET WANTS MORE TEETH” FOR MEDICARE-GUTTING BOARD: (Phillip Klein, “Obama Budget Wants More Teeth for Medicare Board,” The Washington Examiner, 2/13/2012)

DEMOCRATS EMPOWERED “15 SAGES” WITH “THE POWER OF THE PURSE” TO GUT MEDICARE: (Editorial Board, “The Presidential Divider,” The Wall Street Journal, 4/14/2011)

WSJ: OBAMA MEDICARE PLAN IS MEDICARE “RATIONING,” WILL “THROW GRANNY OVER THE CLIFF”: “One place to start is by attacking the Democratic plan to cut Medicare via political rationing. Mr. Ryan’s budget had the virtue of embarrassing President Obama’s spend-more initial budget, and the White House responded by proposing to increase the power of the new Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) to decide what, and how much, Medicare will pay for. The ObamaCare bill goes to great lengths to shelter this 15-member, unelected board from Congressional review, with the goal of letting these bureaucrats throw granny over the cliff if Medicare isn’t reformed. Yet few Americans know anything about IPAB or its rationing intentions.” (Editorial, “The GOP’s New York Spanking,” The Wall Street Journal, 5/26/2011)

AMERICAN UROLOGICAL ASSOCIATION: DOCTORS WILL “OPT OUT OF THE MEDICARE PROGRAM OR BE DRIVEN OUT OF PRACTICE ALTOGETHER”: “He warned, ‘These cuts could be driven so low that physicians will be forced to limit the number of Medicare beneficiaries they see, opt out of the Medicare program, or be driven out of practice altogether.’” (Ralph Lindeman, “IPAB Would Reduce Access to Care, Witnesses Tell Ways and Means Panel,” Bloomberg, 3/7/2012)

DOCTOR AND PATIENT GROUPS: IPAB’S CUTS “WOULD LEAD TO A REDUCTION IN ACCESS TO CARE”: “The Independent Payment Advisory Board, created under the health care law to help control Medicare costs, lacks flexibility to do much more than cut provider payments that would lead to a reduction in access to care, witnesses told a House Ways and Means panel March 6.” (Ralph Lindeman, “IPAB Would Reduce Access to Care, Witnesses Tell Ways and Means Panel,” Bloomberg, 3/7/2012)

41 DOCTORS’ GROUPS REPRESENTING 400,000 DOCTORS FEAR THAT “15 UNELECTED AND LARGELY UNACCOUNTABLE” BUREAUCRATS WILL MAKE MEDICARE DECISIONS, AND NONE ARE ALLOWED TO BE “PRACTICING PHYSICIANS”: “With the advent of the IPAB, however, the people’s elected representatives will no longer have power over Medicare payment policy. Instead, these major health policy decisions will rest in the hands of 15 unelected and largely unaccountable individuals. Even worse, if IPAB fails to report recommendations or never becomes operational, this power will rest solely in the hands of a single individual – the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. Additionally, fewer than half of the IPAB members can be health care providers, and none are permitted to be practicing physicians or be otherwise employed.” (Letter from Healthcare Stakeholders, House Energy and Commerce Committee, 3/5/2012)

If today’s seniors want an example of what cuts in reimbursement rates will do to access to healthcare for people on Medicare, they need only to look at what has happened to Medicaid. Medicaid patients can’t find doctors who will take them and often end up in the emergency room as a result:

“HEALTH AFFAIRS STUDY: ONE-THIRD OF DOCTORS WON’T ACCEPT NEW MEDICAID PATIENTS”: “[Medicaid] pays doctors a fraction of what private insurers pay, which leads doctors to stop seeing Medicaid patients. Medicaid patients’ lack of access to health care, in turn, leads to substandard health outcomes. This week, a new study published in the journal Health Affairs confirms what common sense should have already told us: when you pay doctors less, you get less access to health care.” (Avik Roy, “ ‘Health Affairs’ Study: One-Third of Doctors Won’t Accept New Medicaid Patients,” Forbes, 8/7/2012)

DOCTORS WERE 73% MORE LIKELY TO REJECT MEDICAID PATIENTS RELATIVE TO THE PRIVATELY INSURED: “The Health Affairs study was conducted by Sandra Decker, an economist at the National Center for Health Statistics, a unit of the Centers for Disease Control. Decker pulled data from the CDC’s 2011 National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey in order to calculate the percentage of physicians who accept new patients, based on patients’ insurance status. She found that primary care doctors were 73 percent more likely to reject Medicaid patients relative to the privately insured (34 percent rejection rate vs. 20 percent) and specialists were 63 percent more likely to reject Medicaid patients (28 to 17).” (Avik Roy, “ ‘Health Affairs’ Study: One-Third of Doctors Won’t Accept New Medicaid Patients,” Forbes, 8/7/2012)

IPAB About to Make Dems’ Medicare Cuts Even Worse http://ow.ly/d3iE1 #iwantrepeal