I come to bury IPAB, not to praise it.
Like Brutus and his co-conspirators wielding the knife against Julius Caesar, the budget deal Congress passed in the early morning hours of February 9 put to death an idea whose time apparently never came and, now never will. The Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), created in the Affordable Care Act (ACA), is history.
It is a rare moment when Republicans and Democrats agree on something they don’t like about the ACA. Behind IPAB’s demise is a belief that Congress shouldn’t delegate its powers to determine Medicare’s rules and a massive political force that reinforced that belief.
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