Home Health & Hospice Week

The window to repeal the presidentially appointed board is narrow.

Opponents of the Independent Payment Advisory Board are attacking the cost-cutting body on legislative and judiciary fronts to head off potentially catastrophic measures.

Reminder: Under the Affordable Care Act passed in 2010, the appointed IPAB has the authority to make compulsory Medicare cost-cutting recommendations.

Reps. Phil Roe (R-Tenn.) and Linda San-chez (D-Calif.) have introduced a bill (H.R. 1190) to repeal IPAB. But the repeal comes with a big price tag — $3.1 billion over 10 years, notes law firm Hall Render. A similar bill was introduced in the Senate in January.

And The Goldwater Institute is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hear its case against the Board. “The Government argues that it is unlikely IPAB will act before 2019,” the institute says in a release. “Even if this were true, the fact that the Board will act after the repeal window allowed by the law has closed is even more reason for the Court to take up this case now.”

Remember: “One of the features that makes IPAB unprecedented is that outside of a short window in 2017 where the Board can only be re-pealed by an also unprecedented supermajority Con-gressional vote, the ACA completely insulates IPAB from repeal and forever prohibits Congress from replacing IPAB ‘proposals,’” the institute notes.

IPAB “would limit access to care for Medicare beneficiaries, shift costs to consumers, and usurp the authority of Congress,” the National Association for Home Care & Hospice warns. And “a requirement in the provision that IPAB must achieve savings within one year would force the IPAB to focus on short-term payment cuts to providers rather than long-term reforms.”