The Medicare Independent Payment Advisory Board needs to be stopped in the cause of preserving American freedom. As passed under Obamacare, it is a super bureaucracy with quasi-legislative authority that even trumps a presidential veto and is immue from judicial and administrative review. As I have written elsewhere, its implementation would be a huge step toward an EU style, democratically unaccountable technocracy of rule by “we the experts.”
With the Democrats in charge, IPAB won’t be repealed because many Democrats believe in technocracy. The only other option is total non cooperation in IPAB’s implementation.
So far, the President has not made any appointments to the 15-member board. But that may soon change. He apparently has asked the Congressional leaders of both parties for recommendations for nominees, as required by the law. Republicans should offer no names because doing so would legitimize the board. (It doesn’t work to say the board is wrong one day, and the next submit names of people you would like to see appointed.)
If the president makes appointments, Republican Senators should turn the hearings into an IPAB consciousness raising session warning the American people of the acute threat that the board presents to American concepts of liberty. And Republican senators should impede approval of all nominees. No exceptions.
Preventing IPAB from starting is better than having to file a lawsuit to have it declared unconstitutional or trying to undo harm once it has been inflicted. And when Obamacare begins to implode, as the “train wreck” will, repealing IPAB should be a first order of business.