The GOP brain trust.
Boycotts seem to be
today's tactic for Republican obstruction. First they refuse to attend a committee hearing to vote on a nominee, shutting down the confirmation process, and now they're
boycotting even an opportunity to offer up GOP nominations.
House Speaker John Boehner and Mitch McConnell have written to President Obama, declaring that they will not offer nominees to the Independent Payment Advisory Board, e.g., Obamcare's "death panels." They say they're doing it to save Medicare.
As you know, we opposed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act because we knew it would increase health costs, impose costly burdens on job creators, and raid Medicare to pay for a massive new entitlement. In order to allow supporters to claim that the law’s Medicare cuts would be realized in the future, it tasked IPAB with reducing payments to providers or eliminating payments for certain treatments and procedures altogether. These reduced payments will force providers to stop seeing Medicare patients, the same way an increased number of doctors have stopped taking Medicaid patients. This will lead to access problems, waiting lists and denied care for seniors.
Which is, of course, bunk, on many levels. That Medicare "raid" is the same raid Paul Ryan included in his budget, the budget that actually does destroy Medicare by privatizing it into a crippled voucher system. To save money. Which is the point of the IPAB, reducing Medicare costs. But McConnell and Boehner don't want to reduce Medicare spending by making it more efficient. They want to reduce Medicare spending by privatizing it and making seniors pay for their own damned health care.
Ironically, though, they're kind of shooting themselves in the foot on this effort to prove just how much they hate Obamacare. As the law is written, an IPAB doesn't have to have a full 15 member complement to exist. It could go forward with any Republican members. And if Republicans choose to filibuster any and all nominees, the secretary of Health and Human Services has the power, under the law, to determine cuts to provider payments as necessary. So Boehner and McConnell are giving up their opportunity to have influence on that Board, and are thus giving all the power to the Obama administration.
How's that obstruction looking now, guys?