Cornyn, Hatch Respond to President’s Proposal to Give More Power to Unelected Health Board

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senators John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Ranking Member of the Senate Finance Committee, today blasted a proposal in the President’s latest deficit reduction plan that punts the difficult decisions to reduce health care costs by dramatically expanding the power of a board of unelected bureaucrats called the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) that was created in the $2.6 trillion health law. Cornyn and Hatch have legislation, The Health Care Bureaucrats Elimination Act, repealing IPAB in order to maintain the critical doctor-patient relationship that is essential to quality health care for all Americans.

“So much for the President’s claim that the health law was entitlement reform.  Today, the President has once again punted the tough decisions to tackling soaring health care costs by dramatically expanding the power of a board of unelected bureaucrats.  This isn’t reform, and this isn’t leadership.  We believe more strongly now than ever that the President should lead and the best way to do that is by repealing this board that was created in the health law and replacing it with serious ideas to reform our unsustainable entitlement programs,” Cornyn and Hatch said in a joint statement.
 
After taking $529 billion from the nearly bankrupt Medicare program to fund new entitlement spending, the $2.6 trillion health care spending law created an unelected, unaccountable board of bureaucrats to make additional cuts to the Medicare program based on arbitrary global budget targets.  The IPAB would empower 15 bureaucrats to make substantial changes to Medicare—without full transparency and accountability to America’s seniors and their elected officials. 

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