The National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) has issued a document titled Life at Risk: How the Obama Health Care Plan Will Ration Your Family’s Medical Treatment—A Factsheet. It gets its very first "fact" seriously wrong.
From the NRLC document:
HOW THE OBAMA HEALTH CARE LAW WILL LIMIT WHAT HEALTH CARE PROVIDERS CAN DO TO SAVE THE LIVES OF YOUR FAMILY MEMBERS
A Powerful Rationing Commission:
An 18-member “Independent Payment Advisory Board” is given the duty, on January 15, 2015 and every two years thereafter, with regard to private (not just governmentally funded) health care, to make “recommendations to slow the growth in national health expenditures” below the rate of medical inflation.
NRLC has it wrong. If you go to the link and look at the chart on page 3 of their document, you will find that NRLC is claiming for 2015, for example, the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) must limit healthcare spending growth to the lesser of (A) "halfway between medical and general inflation" and (B) 0.5%. That is a mistaken interpretation of IPAB's mandate. What is actually the case for 2015 is that IPAB does nothing unless Medicare spending is projected to exceed "halfway between medical and general inflation" (something which for 2015 may not even happen). If it does indeed happen, IPAB will be required to make proposals to cut costs by no more than 0.5%.
From 2018 onward, NRLC claims IPAB must make recommendations to limit spending to (A) the percentage increase in GDP plus 1% or (B) 1.5%, whicever is lower. However, what is actually the case is that if Medicare spending is projected to grow at less than GDP plus 1%, IPAB does nothing, and if projected Medicare spending does exceed GDP plus 1%, IPAB makes recommendations to cut Medicare costs by no more than 1.5%.
So NRLC has it wrong. IPAB is required to make recommendations to cut Medicare spending by at most 1.5% a year no matter how fast Medicare grows. IPAB is not tasked with keeping Medicare spending below any certain level, as NRLC suggests, and certainly not below the level of medical inflation! And as for nonfederal spending, IPAB makes only recommendations. It has no power to implement them.
Comments