ObamaCare’s Independent Payment Advisory Board, loving referred to as the “Death Panel” is finding disfavor with a few Democrats. But noone is talking about its ugly cousin, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation which is just as bad and maybe worse. Both were set up to preserve rather than reform Medicare’s fee-for-service program and both embrace ObamaCare’s technocratic mind-set.
The “Death Panel” is charged with imposing stricter price controls over Medicare. As yet, these 15 supposed experts have yet to be nominated by Obama. But when they take control, seniors beware! Price controls can only be achieved by lowering quality of care received and rationing, as proved by Canada and the UK.
The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation has largely flown below radar due in part to its mission of promoting new and more efficient payment systems and models of care. But this agency is just as dangerous as the Death Panel.
It is a massive bureaucracy within the Department of Health and Human Services run by political appointees. But, unlike most of the federal bureaucracy, the agency NEVER has to appear before Congress to get appropriation which is an important check against bureaucratic abuse of power. Obama made certain that it would have no Congressional oversight by funding it up front with $10 million to cover its cost for ten years. And at the end of the first decade, and every decade thereafter, they get another $10 billion. This massive infusion of taxpayer money has allowed the Center to grow from 68 employees in 2012 to a planned 440 full-time workers in 2015.
The Center also has wide-ranging authority to alter Medicare and Medicaid programs without Congressional action, revealing the mind-set that government is best positioned to lead in medical delivery, despite all evidence to the contrary. The history of Medicare’s payment systems is one of politicized decision-making by regulators, protection of incumbent providers, and roadblocks to new medical technologies and new ways of doing business. It’s the opposite of an environment conductive to innovation. Inefficiency is rampant.
Ironically, the Center is now trying to promote initiatives, such as accountable-care organizations and bundled payments, the same tools already in use by Medicare Advantage, which ObamaCare cut by more than $150 billion over the next decade. The agency’s authority is broad enough to allow across-the-board cuts in payments to hospitals and physicians, and lower reimbursements for pharmaceuticals and related products, all in the name of innovation.
The CBO expects that to happen. They say the legislation to repeal the agency’s $10 billion in funding would increase the deficit because its cost-cutting agenda is expected to produce more than $10 billion in savings from reimbursement cuts, just one more indicator that budgetary scorekeeping is hopelessly biased in favor of irrational government controls.
Source: Lanhee J. Chen, research fellow at the Hoover Institution, and James C. Capretta, senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center
