Dems Agree That ObamaCare Panel Will Not Work

So, Sarah Palin was right all along, the ObamaCare IPAB (Independent Payment Advisory Board) won't work.  It will hurt and possibly kill people.

This 'board' is an unworkable "medical rationing" committee which will make pronouncements about medical spending for large categories of persons (with no knowledge of each individual situation) to try to "save" costs.   An unelected, unaccountable panel of 15 persons can't do squat except cause millions of problems!  It's totally unworkable!  It's like a Soviet-style "politburo" trying to preside over the health care of 100s of  millions of persons. What a joke!  Can you imagine the contempt that will emerge from doctors?

Even Howard Dean, a physician and former Governor of Vermont, agrees.  From the WSJ, an article by Howard Dean called The Affordable Care Act's Rate Setting Won't Work:

One major problem is the so-called Independent Payment Advisory Board. The IPAB is essentially a health-care rationing body. By setting doctor reimbursement rates for Medicare and determining which procedures and drugs will be covered and at what price, the IPAB will be able to stop certain treatments its members do not favor by simply setting rates to levels where no doctor or hospital will perform them.

However, rate setting—the essential mechanism of the IPAB—has a 40-year track record of failure. What ends up happening in these schemes (which many states including my home state of Vermont have implemented with virtually no long-term effect on costs) is that patients and physicians get aggravated because bureaucrats in either the private or public sector are making medical decisions without knowing the patients. Most important, once again, these kinds of schemes do not control costs. The medical system simply becomes more bureaucratic.

I believe the IPAB will never control costs based on the long record of previous attempts in many of the states, including my own state of Vermont. If Medicare is to have a secure future, we have to move away from fee-for-service medicine, which is all about incentives to spend more, and has no incentives in the system to keep patients healthy. The IPAB has no possibility of helping to solve this major problem and will almost certainly make the system more bureaucratic and therefore drive up administrative costs.

 But Dean still supports the legislation!!