Obamacare's IPAB: Death To The Constitution, Death To Everyone

By Dr. Elizabeth Vliet at the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons:

The Independent Payment Advisory Board, or IPAB, is one of the lesser known features of “healthcare reform” tucked away in the thousands of pages of the “Stimulus Bill” from 2009 and the healthcare law passed in March 2010.

Just exactly what is IPAB and how does it affect your life and health, and your access to medical care? And how does IPAB fit with our Constitutional Republic and our guarantees to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” under the US Constitution?

IPAB is a panel of unelected, government-appointed bureaucrats set up under the guise of “efficiency” and “clinical effectiveness” to “recommend” cuts to Medicare services in order to “bend the cost curve downward.” That is government-speak for “spend less money on patient care.”

IPAB is a threat to your health, and your life, if you are the patient whose care is denied because of your age, your condition, and cost based on how many “quality” years you are expected to live.

IPAB is set up to function exactly like the rationing board of the National Health Service (NHS) in Britain, called National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE). The strong arm of NICE prevents NHS doctors from prescribing state-of-the-art drugs for breast, stomach, lung, and prostate cancer or diseases like multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, and many others.

IPAB is also charged with slowing the growth of payments to doctors and hospitals, reducing the rate of medication reimbursement under Medicare, and “reducing waste” in Medicare spending. “Waste,” however, is defined solely by bureaucrats, and may include medicine you actually need.

It’s worth reading the whole thing.

The state will declare you OBSOLETE.

You never learn, do you?  History teaches you nothing!

On the contrary, history teaches us a great deal!  We had predecessors, Mr. Wordsworth, who had the beginnings of the right idea.

Hitler!

Yes, Hitler of course.

Stalin!

Stalin too.  But their error was not one of excess, it was simply not going far enough!  Too many undesirables were left around, and undesirables eventually form a core of resistance!  Old people, for example, clutching to the past, and won’t accept the new.  The sick, the maimed, and the deformed!  They fasten onto the healthy body and damage it!  So we eliminate them!  And people like yourself – they can perform no useful function for the state – so we put an end to them.

- Mr. Romney Wordsworth and The Chancellor, Twilight Zone: The Obsolete Man

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