Ed Morrissey
HotAir.com
4/27/2010
Not that any of this comes as a surprise to those who paid attention to the ObamaCare bill, of course. I wrote about the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) twice in December, first when the CBO scored the bill as a $130 billion deficit reduction, and the second time just before the passage of ObamaCare by the Senate. In both posts, I noted how the IPAB was set up specifically as a rationing system, which ObamaCare advocates denied, but which none other than OMB Director Peter Orszag confirms in this interview from earlier this month, caught by Naked Emperor News for Breitbart TV:
If anything, Orszag might be underestimating the difficulty in changing the IPAB’s decisions on rationing. The bill required a supermajority of 67 votes in the Senate to override the IPAB, which made Jim DeMint irate and prompted a big “I told you so” from Sarah Palin. As I wrote at the time, based on information from a Capitol Hill source:
The bill sets up a supermajority threshold of 67 votes to bring accountability to [IPAB] decisions, and the rule on being in or out of order can get waived at 60 votes. However, as this battle shows, even getting to 60 is almost an impossibility, let alone 67. Clearly [Harry] Reid wants to put accountability out of reach with these radical propositions.
ObamaCare is a rationing system, and the IPAB will be one of the key drivers for that rationing. If you don’t believe me, just listen to Orszag.
