November 1, 2017

NRLC writes Congress is support of repealing the Independent Payment Advisory Board

Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB)
The National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), the federation of state right-to-life organizations, urges you to support H.R. 849, the Protecting Seniors’ Access to Medicare Act of 2017. NRLC intends to include the roll call on final passage H.R. 849 in our scorecard of key right-to-life votes of the 115th Congress.

The mission of National Right to Life is to protect and defend the most fundamental right, the right to life of every innocent human being from the beginning of life to natural death. In that defense, we strongly urge you to repeal the so-called Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB).

The IPAB is composed of 15 unelected bureaucrats who are answerable to no one. The Board is directed to recommend measures to limit private, nongovernmental spending on health care to a growth rate below medical inflation. Although most news reports have focused on the Board’s authority to limit government spending in Medicare, little attention has been given to this more sweeping danger of rationing healthcare paid for with nongovernmental dollars.

IPAB’s powers go well beyond some benign effort to control Medicare spending. IPAB would recommend drastic limits for the Department of Health and Human Services to impose on what Americans are allowed to spend out of their own funds to save their own lives and the lives of their families. More can be found at: www.nrlc.org/uploads/communications/healthcarereport2014.pdf

National Right to Life urges every Member of Congress to recognize the importance of repealing the Independent Payment Advisory Board. We urge you to support H.R. 849 to repeal this assault on our health care system and the sanctity of life and to reject the dangerous consolidation of unchecked government power which IPAB represents.

Thank you for your consideration of the position of National Right to Life on this matter of importance to our organization.

Sincerely,