When Will the GOP Go On Offense Over Obama's Medicare Plan?

[Geee]

Weekly Standard:

That's the question Jennifer Rubin is asking about over at the Washington Post today, and it's a good one. While Democrats have been all Mediscare all the time, no one's really asking about Obamacare's Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB). The president claims this will cut a trillion and a half dollars out of Medicare, but he leaves out the part where he actually explains how this will work:

It’s rationing, plain and simple. Or in more stark terms: The Ryan plan asks wealthier Medicare recipients to pay more; Obama’s plan denies care. Imagine if a Republican proposed a plan that, without any realistic reform element, simply said we’d pay much less for seniors’ care.

The Obama plan supposes that the 15 bureaucrats on the IPAB will unlock the wonders of cost control that have eluded us all. But it boils down to a confusion between costs and expenditures. The Obama plan will have us paying less but leave the underlying costs of medical care untouched.

Recall that cost-control was, after all, the basis for Obama’s health-care reform. In a white paper for the Galen Institute, Capretta wrote: “So the crucial question was always what to do about cost escalation. Or, more precisely, what changes in Medicare have the best chance of bringing about continual improvement in the productivity and quality of patient care?”

Rubin does an excellent job of explaining the serious pitfalls of the president's approach. However, she doesn't address one big problem with IPAB that I explained in last week's issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD. The president's Medicare plan might well be unconstitutional and there's a serious lawsuit challenging it: