On the recordMarch 7, 2012
I am happy to respond to my colleague from Wyoming Senator Barrasso, who has been not only a Senator but a medical doctor and who has been on the receiving end of government policy, that while it may be well intended, backfires, particularly this bipartisan support now we have seen in the House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee yesterday, where they voted to repeal this Independent Payment Advisory Board--Independent Payment Advisory Board, IPAB--not iPOD, IPAB. The reason this is so important, and I would like to ask my colleague, from his long experience as a medical practitioner, the purpose of this 15-member, unelected, unaccountable bureaucracy to actually set prices for health care, what happens if, to the exclusion of all other health care reform, the IPAB or the Federal Government generally cuts reimbursement to providers? It would seem to me we get a phenomenon that we get the illusion of coverage, but we have no real access to health care. The experience we have had in Texas is, for example, Medicaid and the President's health care bill puts a whole lot of people into Medicaid, but only about one-third of Medicaid patients can find a doctor who will see a new Medicaid patient in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, one of the most populous parts of our State.…
