Obamacare Hidden Panel of Unelected Officials Beyond Congressional Control

June 20, 2012

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By Susanne Posel
Occupy Corporatism

The Cato Institute released a study entitled, The Independent Payment Advisory Board: PPACA’s Anti-Constitutional and Authoritarian Super-Legislature, authored by Diane Cohen and Michael Cannon, which states that once the “unelected government officials on this board submit a legislative proposal to Congress, it automatically becomes law.”

The Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) is comprised of “doctors and patient advocates would be nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate.”

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), a.k.a. Obamacare, requires that the Secretary of Health and Human Services (SHHS) implement the proposal. Denying its execution would necessitate the House, Senate and President agree on an alternate plan.

The IPAB’s plan would become law without Congressional approval, oversight, or even be subject to a presidential veto. Once this proposal is submitted, it is law.

The IPAB was the brain child of the Commonwealth Fund ; a private foundation that targets “society’s most vulnerable, including low-income people, the uninsured, minority Americans, young children, and elderly adults.”

The IPAB will be enabled to declare:

• Policies regarding healthcare to Congress
• Recommendations on costs, mitigating waste, prioritizing disbursement of care
• Impose taxes whether the US government pays the medical bills or not
• Ration medical care to Americans as they see fit

Congress, having the power to accept the IPAB’s recommendations can either act on them or let the SHHS do so.

The IPAB, an independent panel, is likening to those in the United Nations (UN); where organizations have oversight panels that decide the direction of the organization and empower it. The only governing body the IPAB will have to answer to is itself.

The most authoritative aspect of the legislation is that “[I]f Congress misses that repeal window, PPACA prohibits Congress from ever altering an IPAB proposal.”

The legislative window for repeals extends to 2017. The Congressional Research Service has falsely interpreted this clause of complete control.

Failure to repeal in Congress by 2017 results in absolute power given to the IPAB by 2020 with no ability of Congress to change that fact. Any law the IPAB writes becomes effectual regardless of any member of the US government’s rejection of it and the over-reaching power extends to the Secretary of Health and Human Services who becomes an executive of the IPAB.

Furthermore, the IPAB would become as powerful as the executive branch of our government, with the right to appropriate funds within the SHHS’ own department.

All the while the IPAB is protected from Congressional oversight and interference.

This authoritarian policy is a first step toward encompassing dictatorship; a plateau that Obama has been teetering on for quite some time. His implementation of UN agendas and policies as evidenced in his executive orders and legislation signed and supported display on obvious trend toward removing the Constitutional rights of our American Republic and replace them with a cleared path toward integration of one world government.