Tommy Thompson: IPAB and how to fix health care reform

Among the many very good reasons not to ram ObamaCare through Congress is that there were too many sneaky provisions--remember few members of Congress had read the bill--and it was not put online before the vote.

The 1099 provision requiring businesses to report all transactions of $600 or more to those lovable IRS agents is one. Another is the creation of the Independent Payment Advisory Board.

The IPAB will consist of 15 members appointed by the president--the Senate must approve.

And what will these folks do? Well, they will impose caps on Medicare spending. In 2015 the caps begin be eased in, by 2018 the will be fixed according to the Kaiser Foundation, with an "[upper] limit is set permanently at per capita gross domestic product growth plus one percentage point."

To live with these caps, it's likely the IPAB will limit patient's choice.

Which brings me to something Gerald Ford said in 1995, "I don't want seven politicians deciding what's medically necessary. I want my doctor to do that."

He wouldn't want 15 bureaucrats doing that either.

Writing for Politico today, former Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson, decried the IPAB.

As a longtime champion of innovative and cost-efficient health care, I cannot support leaving such a critical task up to an unelected board. Americans entrust their elected officials with the difficult task of making decisions like these. That is how democracies work.

Board supporters mistakenly assume that a blanket reduction in the number of tests and medical procedures is likely to produce better results. However, basing our assessment of care on averages cannot produce better health outcomes in the long run.

As providers in my home state of Wisconsin have demonstrated, it is possible to slow the growth of costs in medical care while also improving quality. Wisconsin providers have used integrated delivery systems, electronic health records systems and care coordination programs to control spending.

The Dartmouth Atlas Project, which documents variations in the use and distribution of medical services across the nation, found that in Wisconsin, both total inflation-adjusted Medicare spending per enrollee and the growth in spending from 1992 to 2006 are below the national rates.

Prior to his stint at HHS, Thompson was a popular four term governor of Wisconsin.

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