Home Health & Hospice Week

The so-called "Super-MedPAC" established in the health care reform law last year is coming under fire. Under the Affordable Care Act, the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) could implement the type of cost-cutting recommendations the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission makes without the congressional approval that MedPAC recs currently require. When Medicare spending reaches certain limits, Congress will have to override IPAB recs with a three-fifths majority to stop them from being implemented. The presidentially appointed board "will surely do more harm than good," says Julie Reiskin of the Colorado Cross-Disability Coalition in a commentary in the Denver Post. "IPAB is dangerously unaccountable and will, without question, restrict access to vital healthcare services." Provider cuts implemented under IPAB will be "sure to ration care or increase consumer cost sharing," Reiskin says in the newspaper. "Boards like these serve only to undermine the quality and even the availability of patient care," says [...]