We all know that Republicans have endeavored to repeal the Affordable Care Act in its entirety. Having failed at that, and with important and widely accepted provisions having already become operational, Republicans have attempted to go after the law in piecemeal fashion. These efforts have not succeeded. This new effort will fail as well, with the strong opposition including that of the President.
I urge a “No" vote on this legislation because health reform must be sustained, and if needed, improved and reformed, not repealed.
Let’s be clear: A Republican vote to repeal IPAB is not a vote to protect Medicare. Republicans voted to end the Medicare guarantee and instead turn seniors’ health care coverage over to insurance companies. This would have shortened Medicare’s solvency, stripped the program of important fraud-fighting tools, increased beneficiary costs, and ended important delivery system reforms.
We only need to look to the Affordable Care Act to see a true vision for protecting the program - a vision that results in lowered beneficiary costs, that improves benefits and that contains important instrumentalities for a reformed delivery system so that we encourage high-value health care, rather than high-volume health care.
According to nearly 300 economists, health reform puts into place essentially every cost-containment provision policy analysts have considered. These measures, which include an array of tools above and beyond IPAB, are so effective that the CBO estimates that IPAB isn’t going to be triggered until sometime after 2021.
CBO estimates that enacting HR. 452 “would not have any budgetary impact in 2012 but would increase direct spending by $3.1 billion over the 2013-2022 period," apparently mostly in the last years alone.
There are ways to have a rational discussion about improvements or changes to IPAB. But this is an attempt to repeal IPAB as part and parcel of the main objective - to repeal health reform.
I strongly urge my colleagues to vote no on this bill.
