Here is how it works: The Affordable Care Act (ACA) grants coverage to about 15 million persons not previously covered by what passed for health care coverage before passage of the ACA. Trouble is that Covered California and other ACA derived plans have now raised their premiums to cover the influx. But the premiums can't be raised enough to cover this influx. It has been determined that a better way is to reduce utilization to keep costs below or equal to the pre-ACA expenditure. This method is a form of rationing with a special dagger aimed at the hearts of the elderly. It is called the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB).
Here's a pre-IPAB example: programs that provide vision care advise patients that refraction is not covered by Medicare or by most commercial PPO plans. Refraction is the method by which corrective lenses are prescribed. Medicare and the commercial PPOs determined that refraction isn't a medical procedure after all. Medicare and the involved PPOs conveniently decided that refractive errors requiring prescribed lenses are a result of changing eye-shape and are not because of disease. Hence, coverage is denied.
How about something more current than refraction? Let's take a look at what's happening to cardiac pacemakers. The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has determined that as of 6 July 2015 coverage for cardiac pacemakers will be restricted to patients with "non-reversible symptomatic bradycardia." This decision means that patients with asymptomatic complete heart block would not be covered and that the exclusion will apply even to patients with asymptomatic Mobitz Type II heart block. So far our information is that the American Medical Association (AMA) has not filed a protest. We're now obliged to ask would-be presidents of AMA and contingent state medical associations where they stand on this matter.
We all recall Sarah Palin's barbs about "death panels" for Medicare. Suddenly, it doesn't seem as though she was all that far off the mark, does it?
That's where the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) comes in -- the IPAB was formed to manage costs that the ACA might run up due to the influx of previously non-covered patients. The IPAB owes its existence to Sections 3403 and 10320 of the ACA. The official job of the IPAB will be to control and cut Medicare spending. The IPAB according to the ACA will be appointed, not elected, and will not be obliged to report to Congress. In effect this technique will remove Congressional oversight of Medicare spending. Instead, unelected IPAB members will have this power. The salary for the 15 IPAB members is proposed to be about $165,000 annually -- once again we see there's money enough for bureaucracy but not for patients and citizens. The IPAB is ripe for repeal before it can do damage.
In the second Obama-Romney debate, Gov. Romney asked President Obama who would be appointed to the IPAB. Obama's answer, and I quote same in toto, was "doctors et cetera."
Although the reply was short, it was also wrong. Trouble is neither Romney nor Obama knew it. The fact is that there is nothing in Sections 3403 or 10320 or in the rest of the ACA that requires even one physician to be appointed to the IPAB. While it's likely that an acquiescent physician can be found, the fact is that there is no legal requirement under the ACA to appoint even one physician to the IPAB. The IPAB should be repealed forthwith -- so doing will improve the ACA by removing what to all intents and purposes looks as close to Palin's death-panels as one can get without handing the IPAB a portable gallows.
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