EILEEN TOPLANSKY: SLAVERY VIA THE INDEPENDENT PAYMENT ADVISORY BOARD (IPAB)
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/slavery-via-the-independent-payment-advisory-board-ipab#ixzz3PSTeWXmk
Given the breathtaking remarks by Gruber and Ezekiel Emanuel, key architects of Obamacare, it behooves all Americans to be reminded of the overarching power that Obama has bestowed upon the Independent Payment Advisory Board or IPAB, a central feature of the ACA or inaptly named Affordable Care Act.
In June 14, 2012, Diane Cohen and Michael F. Cannon co-authored Policy Analysis No. 700 highlighting the egregious assault on the Constitution via IPAB. Entitled “The Independent Payment Advisory Board: PPACA’s Anti-Constitutional and Authoritarian Super-Legislature” it underscores the absolute dictatorial hold the government now has on all Americans. The salient features of this report bear constant repetition and the need for the Republican-dominated Congress to act swiftly to repeal every single part of this law.
Obamacare gives “unfettered power to unelected government officials.” Actually it “bypasses the constitutionally prescribed manner by which proposed legislation becomes law” and even more frightening, the ACA “…attempts to prevent a future Congress from repealing IPAB.”
Let’s elaborate on this totalitarian and “unprecedented delegation of legislative, executive, and judicial authority in violation of the Separation of Powers doctrine.” In effect, Obamacare
•automatically funds IPAB in perpetuity.
•does not require the IPAB to be bipartisan.
•has designated that the IPAB be made up of 15 unelected individuals; in fact, “the board may conduct business whenever half of its appointed members are present and whenever as few as eight members gather.” Actually, Obamacare would allow a “sole appointed member to constitute a quorum, conduct official business, and issue proposals.”
•authorizes the Secretary of Health and Human Services to exercise the board’s powers unilaterally. This includes the “ability to appropriate funds to her own department to administer her own directives.”
The stated mission of IPAB is to “prevent Medicare spending from growing faster than their specified target rate.” In other words, they will ration care and invoke death panels by denying life-saving medicines and treatments. In effect, the IPAB faces “almost no limitations on its power to limit, reallocate or regulate health care.” Beginning this year (2015), Obamacare gives IPAB “the power to impose price controls and to impose taxes and to ration care.” It is as simple as that.
Medicare payments to health care providers and private insurers participating in Medicare will be cut. IPAB has the ability to threaten states by blackmail, i.e., it will require states to implement federal laws or enact new state laws in order to receive federal funding.
Those who would argue that the ACA prohibits rationing per se fail to see through the murky definition of rationing. Thus, in Alice-in-Wonderland fashion, “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – – that’s all.”
(Through the Looking Glass, Chapter 6)
Moreover, the IPAB can actually increase taxes and those who would argue that this is not possible, remember that the “PPACA specifically states that the Secretary’s implementation of IPAB’s proposals is not judicially reviewable.”
In effect, Obamacare has nothing to do with enhancing health care; it has everything to do with controlling every aspect of Americans’ lives. Consequently, Obamacare “creates an unaccountable lawmaking body, and leaves elected officials with little to stop it.”
And it does not stop with Medicare rationing. IPAB “will have the power to ration or reorganize care even for those who are not enrolled in government programs.” And this power was always “the clear intent of IPAB’s architects.” Price controls will surely be a component as the “board is likely to end up setting prices for all medical services.”
And with malicious intent, Obama fought hard for IPAB over strong opposition from Congress which rightly understood that the IPAB was “usurping [Congressional] power.”
IPAB’s decision “will have the force of law.” And here is the crux of the despotic feature of this law. Accordingly, “PPACA’s authors included several provisions designed to prevent future Congresses, presidents, and courts from blocking IPAB’s proposals.” Thus, there will be no accountability to the very people whose lives will be affected.
Obamacare exempts the IPAB from “any rule making requirement that Congress imposes on other executive-branch agencies.” Therefore, no hearings, testimonies or evidence from the public are required.
Even when he is out of office, Obama will be forever influencing America since, via the law, any future president’s authority will be restricted. Thus, the “PPACA unconstitutionally attempts to deny [a] president his constitutional prerogative to use his own discretion as to what measures he submits to Congress.” One may scoff at the constitutional scholarship of Obama but I submit he knows enough to trash the Constitution and it is never just a coincidence that all of his actions are aimed at the total destruction of this country’s most important legal foundation.
And finally, Obamacare limits Congress’ ability to make “any changes that would result in greater Medicare spending.” Consequently, Congress becomes inconsequential. And these are just the initial steps to the time when congressional interference with this heinous law becomes completely irrelevant.
Most terrifying though is that without GOP concerted action to repeal every scintilla of Obamacare, in 2020 Congress will lose all power to control IPAB. According to the law,
Congress may amend or reject IPAB proposals, subject to stringent limitations, but only from 2015 through 2019. If Congress fails to repeal IPAB in 2017, then after 2019, IPAB may legislate without any congressional interference.
Moreover, if “Congress fails to repeal IPAB … then after 2020, Congress loses the ability even to offer substitutes for IPAB proposals.” Thus, “to constrain IPAB at all after 2020, Congress must repeal it between January and August in 2017.”
Is the GOP listening? Will it act accordingly? Will Americans be unrelenting in speaking up and demanding action to “resist this arrant tyranny?”
As we have come to expect from the most non-transparent administration in history, Obama and the Democrats “went to extraordinary, unconstitutional, . . . lengths to try to protect IPAB from. . . being repealed by future Congresses.” Henceforth, the Act states that Congress may only repeal IPAB if it follows these precise steps:
•Wait until the year 2017
•Introduce a specifically worded “Joint Resolution” in the House and Senate between January 1 and February 1
•Pass that resolution with a three-fifths vote of all members of each chamber by August 15.
As Cohen and Cannon meticulously point out in their analysis, “the IPAB’s constitutional infirmities are numerous.” In fact, “after 2017, Congress could repeal Medicare, but not the board it created to run Medicare. Congress (and the states) could repeal the Bill of Rights. But not IPAB.” Astounding!
Is this America? Or China?
Aaron Klein points out that “Obama has also established a Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute with funding of $3.8 billion.” While a section of Obamacare states that “the secretary of health and human services may not use research data … in a manner that treats the life of an elderly, disabled, or terminally ill individual as lower in value than that of an individual who is younger, non-disabled, or not terminally ill” there is a qualifier which does allow the health secretary to limit any “alternative treatments … if such treatments are not recommended by the new research institute.” Thus the health secretary is given unlimited power to determine treatments — think death panels, anyone?
Pundits wonder if we are entering a dictatorship. I maintain we are already there. The “government’s control of America’s health care sector closely tracks the predictions of economist Friedrich Hayek, author of The Road to Serfdom.” In essence, Obamacare, as always intended, is not “merely unconstitutional–it is anti-constitutional.” Until the entire law is dismantled and the IPAB becomes an acronym in a dustbin, this country will no longer be the America most of us love and cherish.
Eileen has been a medical librarian, an Emergency Medical Technician and a Hebrew School teacher. She is currently an adjunct college instructor of English composition and literature. Active in the 1970’s Soviet Jewry Refusenik movement, she continues to speak out against tyranny. Eileen is also a regular contributor to American Thinker. She can be reached at middlemarch18@gmail.com
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