The House Republican leadership "braintrust"
The Republican strategy of dismantling the Affordable Care Act piece by piece has hit a bit of a roadblock in the House. One of their prime targets has been the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), what they like to call a "death panel," and what Mitt Romney slightly less hyperbolically
calls "an unaccountable board with rationing power." It, of course, has none of that power. It was a Senate proposal that made it into the law to create a board of health care experts, approved in a Senate confirmation process, to lower Medicare spending on the provider side if growth exceeds per-capita GDP plus 1 percent on a per-beneficiary basis.
A number of House Democrats don't want Congress ceding power over Medicare spending to an independent board. Never mind that their track record with handling that job is less than stellar (see the perennial mess that is the "doc fix"), some of these Democrats have signed on to the specific IPAB repeal effort. But in a completely predictable move, Republicans have created a poision pill to their own legislation, causing Democrats to back off. They want to pay for the repeal through medical malpractice reform.
“Unfortunately, Republican leadership is manipulating the dialogue on this issue for political purposes, which will undoubtedly lead many Democratic members to vote against the bill — despite support for the underlying policy from House Democrats across the ideological spectrum,” Rep. Allyson Schwartz (D-PA), the most outspoken Democratic opponent of Obama’s Medicare panel, told TPM. “By unnecessarily tying repeal of IPAB to a partisan malpractice bill, House Republicans have effectively ensured that this bill is dead. This is deeply disappointing.”
Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), another signatory of IPAB repeal, told TPM the GOP lost his vote with the tort reform pay-for — and predicted other Dems will bolt, too. “It’s typical of their irresponsible approach,” Frank said in an interview Monday. “They have a lot of Democratic support to repeal [IPAB] and they know it. They were dangerously close to having some bipartisanship and they couldn’t accept that.” He said the two measures are unrelated and decried the move to link them “an overreach to appease the right wing.”
The House will vote on it next week and it will pass the House with mostly GOP support. But because of this poison pill, Senate Democrats are unlikely to sign on, and the bill would face a veto in the White House anyway.
None of which will deter House leadership from spending more time on a futile, far-right political statement. Because that's what they do, that and take vacation. The reason they're voting next week instead of this week is because they, of course, are in recess.