From James C. Capretta at The New Atlantis:
the Obama administration delivered one of the more remarkable presidential power grabs seen in recent memory (the transmittal letter is here, and a section-by-section description of the proposal is available here).
The president has decided — just days before the deadline he himself set for passage of health care bills in both chambers of Congress — that he wants to create a new and very powerful executive branch agency, the Independent Medicare Advisory Council (IMAC), which would be accountable only to him and have the authority to re-write the Medicare program from top to bottom by executive memo. Now that’s audacious.
…
That would be a remarkable shift of power on its own, but the president’s proposal doesn’t stop there. Not only would the council make recommendations on payment updates, it would also have the authority to propose other “Medicare reforms” which would go into effect unless Congress could muster veto override majorities in opposition. …
Still, the fact that the administration is pushing this bill at all speaks volumes. Here’s a Democratic president telling a Democratic Congress that it can’t be trusted to run Medicare anymore. That’s stunning, especially so because Democrats, including the president, are working feverishly to exert additional governmental control over health insurance for working age Americans. If Congress can’t run Medicare well, what possible rationale is there for standing up another government-run insurance plan?
Nonetheless, the audacity is something to behold. Certainly unilateral executive branch authority to re-write entitlement programs from scratch would have come in awful handy during the Reagan and Bush years. But that may dawn on others as well. Like Medicare beneficiaries, physicians, hospitals, labs, nursing homes, and, of course, House and Senate members too. Good luck, Mr. President.
Read more the whole post about the Independent Medicare Advisory Council here.
Peter Suderman at Reason.com has the following observations on the Independent Medicare Advisory Council:
The idea is to keep politically motivated legislators out of the business of determining Medicare pay rates and reimbursements. But rather than insulating health care from legislative politics, it insulates legislators from the political backlash against rationing and restrictions on care. IMAC would essentially turn Medicare into a government-run HMO, leaving seniors stuck with the sort of micromanaged coverage much of the country rejected throughout the 90s—and perhaps exacerbating the potential for care shortages as doctors look to avoid treating those covered by low reimbursement rates.
(via David R. Henderson at EconLog)
