Kevin Mooney of The Pelican Post has written an exceptional article explaining how ObamaCare creates IPAB, an unelected board of bureaucrats, who will have the power to impose health care cuts and effectively ration care. Most troubling about IPAB is that their decisions cannot be overturned by a majority in Congress. Mooney provides about a lawsuit in Arizona, brought by the Goldwater Institute, challenging IPAB's constitutionality because "IPAB has unprecedented authority to make public policy without any meaningful oversight from the legislative, judicial or executive branches of government, according to the suit."

Diane Cohen, of Goldwater, states: "IPAB has unprecedented authority to make public policy without any meaningful oversight from the legislative, judicial or executive branches of government, according to the suit."

As Docs4PatientCare has noted, IPAB is one avenue by which ObamaCare moves the United States towards socialized medicine where government will be able to ration care. In Britain, doctors are instructed to ration life-saving, early detection cancer screenings to save money. 

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ObamaCare creates a very powerful 15 person board known as IPAB (the Independent Payment Advisory Board) which will have the power to rein in healthcare spending and make choices about which procedures the government will cover for patients.  In essence, to ration care or, as the President has said to pick the "blue pill" instead of the "red bill."

What will America's health care system look like under IPAB?  Just look to Britain's health care system. According to The Independent, in Britain "Hip replacements, cataract surgery and tonsil removal are among operations now being rationed in a bid to save [Britain's National Health System] money."

In addition, the paper reports:

• Hip and knee replacements only being allowed where patients are in severe pain. Overweight patients will be made to lose weight before being considered for an operation.
• Cataract operations being withheld from patients until their sight problems "substantially" affect their ability to work.
• Tonsillectomy (removing tonsils) only to be carried out in children if they have had seven bouts of tonsillitis in the previous year.
• Grommets to improve hearing in children only being inserted in "exceptional circumstances" and after monitoring for six 

The paper also reports that Doctors are concerned about the affect of these policies on their patients.  Need to know what America's health care system will look like under ObamaCare - just look to Britain. It's not pretty.

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Michelle Malkin has a new post on National Review Online that explains why many Democrats are joining Republicans to oppose IPAB, ObamaCare's 15 member board empowered to yield unprecedented power to restrict access to care under Medicare.  But that is only part of the story, under ObamaCare:

1. IPAB empowers bureaucrats to make funding decisions and denies Congress their appropriate role in this process.
2. The decisions of IPAB are not subject to judicial review.
3. The decision making process is not subject to sunshine laws and the public will be unable to witness the process of the government making decisions that will impact their lives and their health.

Michelle Malkin has a new post on National Review Online that explains why many Democrats are joining Republicans to oppose IPAB, ObamaCare's 15 member board empowered to yield unprecedented power to restrict access to care under Medicare.  But that is only part of the story, under ObamaCare:

1. IPAB empowers bureaucrats to make funding decisions and denies Congress their appropriate role in this process.
2. The decisions of IPAB are not subject to judicial review.
3. The decision making process is not subject to sunshine laws and the public will be unable to witness the process of the government making decisions that will impact their lives and their health.

Today's Wall Street Journal has a great op-ed about the futility of IPAB, ObamaCare's commission that is charged with lowering Medicare costs.  As the article points out, one of the biggest problems with Medicare is that seniors are encouraged to overuse their plans because of the minimal cost-sharing involved in the program.  Furthermore, low Medicare reimbursement rates have the impact of shifting costs to private-sector health insurance plans.  

The three major problems the article references are:
1) Overuse of Medicare services
2) Significant cost-shifting
3) Medicare fraud and abuse

According to Congressman Phil Gingrey from Georgia, IPAB, the Independent Payment Advisory Board created by ObamaCare, will cause seniors to die.  “Democrats like to picture us as pushing grandmother over the cliff or throwing someone under the bus. In either one of those scenarios, at least the senior has a chance to survive,” Gingrey said.

For the full story from Politico, click here.

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The editors at National Review Online have a great piece up about the many problems with IPAB, ObamaCare's so-called "Independent Payment Advisory Board," which will have the power to arbitrarily fix prices in America's health care system (read: ration care).

An excerpt is pasted below, but the entire article is worth reading here.

Further, IPAB has serious constitutional problems. When the board issues its “recommendations,” Congress can pass a different plan (as long as it cuts the required amount of spending); alternatively, the Senate can override the board with a three-fifths vote. If that fails, however, the recommendations become law without the involvement of elected officials. In addition, the law forbids judicial review of the recommendations and purports to dictate the process by which a future Congress can discontinue the board.

In short, IPAB is a monstrosity. Whatever misgivings the public has about Ryan’s Medicare reforms, it will surely recoil from IPAB, if it learns about it. To that end, House Republicans should vote for Tennessee representative Phil Roe’s bill to repeal it. They would no doubt get some support from Democrats (seven are co-sponsors), making it a bipartisan rebuke of President Obama’s favorite Medicare reform.

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Sally Pipes makes has a great new article that details the fact that ObamaCare's supporters are rejecting IPAB - one of the law's central cost savings provisions.  IPAB is a 15-member board that will have the power, as Pipes writes, to make "recommendations for reducing Medicare spending if costs exceed a specified cap. Those recommendations will automatically become law unless Congress blocks them and offers equivalent spending cuts in their place." 

Pipes also writes:

"As the IPAB’s drawbacks have become clearer, some strange political bedfellows have lined up to call for the panel’s repeal. Led by Congresswoman Allyson Schwartz, D-Pa., seven House Democrats now find themselves sharing common cause with House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., and the entire Republican caucus on this issue.

In fact, IPAB has never been popular with some of the staunchest defenders of President Obama’s health care plan. More than 70 House Democrats called on President Obama and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to drop it during the debate before ObamaCare’s passage.

Leading liberal Congressman Pete Stark, D-Calif., has called IPAB a “dangerous provision” that “sets [Medicare] up for unsustainable cuts” and endangers patients’ health. And the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare — a prominent supporter of Obamacare — is now agitating for the Board’s repeal."

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Stanley Kurtz over at National Review has a great posting about IPAB.  He raises great points about some of the stealth problems with ObamaCare.

An excerpt:

A month ago here at NRO, my EPPC colleague James Capretta described the real plan by which the president and his allies aim to close the fiscal gap. Their goal, says Capretta, is to work by stealth, so voters never fully realize that the government has adopted their strategy. The first part of the plan involves taxing “the rich” for Medicare and health insurance, but without Reagan-style indexing of taxes to inflation. That way, inflation-driven “bracket creep” will raise health-care taxes on the middle class without congressional Democrats ever having to vote for new taxes. (See Ross Douthat on this today.)

The second part of the plan involves IPAB-imposed price controls and the large-scale rationing of health care that implies. But to work, IPAB’s authority has got to extend beyond Medicare. The idea, says Capretta, is to wait until the massive financial strains brought on by Obamacare bring calls for cost control. That’s when the Democrats will push for IPAB’s authority to be extended beyond Medicare to all of Obamacare, at which point we’ll be very close to a single-payer health-care system with Canadian-style rationing.