Reuters: Politics: Republicans refuse to name members to healthcare panel

Reuters: Politics Reuters.com is your source for breaking news, business, financial and investing news, including personal finance and stocks. Reuters is the leading global provider of news, financial information and technology solutions to the world's media, financial institutions, businesses and individuals. // via fulltextrssfeed.com

Republicans refuse to name members to healthcare panel May 9th 2013, 16:12 House Speaker John Boehner holds a news conference at the U.S. Capitol in Washington March 21, 2013. Credit: Reuters/Gary Cameron By David Morgan WASHINGTON | Thu May 9, 2013 12:12pm EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In a largely symbolic move, Republican leaders in Congress told President Barack Obama on Thursday that they will not participate in picking members of a controversial healthcare panel intended to restrain cost growth in the Medicare health insurance program for the elderly and disabled. House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell informed the president in a May 9 letter that they will not recommend appointments to the 15-member Independent Payment Advisory Board, or IPAB, and want the panel repealed instead. "We believe Congress should repeal IPAB, just as we believe we ought to repeal the entire healthcare law. In its place, we should work in a bipartisan manner to develop the long-term structural changes that are needed to strengthen and protect Medicare," the letter said. There was no immediate response from the White House. The move reflects a ratcheting-up of Republican opposition to Obama's Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which is only months away from bringing sweeping reforms to the $2.8 trillion U.S. healthcare system including healthcare coverage for millions of people who lack it. House Republicans, who have already voted to repeal or defund the law three-dozen times, intend to vote next week on another symbolic repeal measure that is expected to pass the House but go nowhere in the Democratically controlled Senate. IPAB was established under the healthcare reform law to recommend Medicare savings should the $590 billion healthcare program for the elderly and disabled exceed set growth targets. The law allows Boehner, McConnell, and their congressional Democratic counterparts to recommend three IPAB members each. But vehement opposition from Republicans and other reform foes, combined with popular dislike for "Obamacare," has long posed a political barrier to its empanelment. "These reduced payments will force providers to stop seeing Medicare patients, the same way an increased number of doctors have stopped taking Medicaid patients. This will lead to access problems, waiting lists and denied care for seniors," Boehner and McConnell said in their letter. The letter, which responded to a March 29 White House request for names, has little real impact. IPAB's cost-cutting role has already been postponed by historically low Medicare cost growth that is expected to remain well below those targets during the next several years, thus delaying any need for action. Opponents regularly mischaracterized IPAB as a "death panel" that would make end-of-life decisions for Medicare beneficiaries, a myth believed by 40 percent of the American public, according to a recent Kaiser Family Foundation survey. (Reporting by David Morgan and Thomas Ferraro editing by Fred Barbash and Jackie Frank) Link this Share this Digg this Email Reprints

You are receiving this email because you subscribed to this feed at blogtrottr.com. If you no longer wish to receive these emails, you can unsubscribe from this feed, or manage all your subscriptions