Regular readers know that I consider an Independent Payment Advisory Board a worthwhile measure to reduce health care costs. Naturally, those on the right who talk the most about health costs are against it.
But it’s also worth noting some of the Democrats who might also help kill the IPAB — and why. The Washington Monthly‘s editors sent out this promotional copy this morning to highlight an important piece in the new issue.
Buried deep within the president’s health care reform law is a secret weapon to slow the rising costs of Medicare and tame the federal budget. It’s called the Independent Payments Advisory Board, and once it’s up and running it will have the power to fast-track a host of cost-cutting reforms that the health care industry has been resisting for years.
Naturally, Republicans want to kill the new board. But they need help from across the aisle. And they just might get it. As Sebastian Jones reports in the upcoming July/August issue of the Washington Monthly, a group of 42 industry-friendly House lawmakers calling themselves the “New Democrat Coalition” is poised to join the GOP in gutting the most important cost-cutting measure in Obamacare. If they succeed, they could damage not only efforts to rein in federal spending but their own president’s reelection chances as well.
To read Jones’ story “Friends Like These” click here.
