National Right to Life Urges Action to repeal IPAB

The Independent Payment Advisory Board (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.

Given this extraordinary power and an apparent disregard for the sanctity of life, it is not surprising that some have dubbed IPAB a “death panel.”

Legislation to permanently repeal IPAB has bipartisan support in both chambers in this and former Congresses. Currently, there is bipartisan legislation (H.R.849/S. 260 Protecting Seniors’ Access to Medicare Act of 2017) which would repeal the IPAB.

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