While some in Congress have wavered on the repeal and replace of Obamacare, conservatives like Knoxville’s Jimmy Duncan, Congressman Phil Roe, gubernatorial candidate Diane Black and recently announced U.S. Senate candidate Marsha Blackburn have never stopped fighting to repeal Obamacare.
Obamacare was chock full of bad ideas that made the American health care system worse, but one of the very worst was the law’s Independent Payment Advisory Board, or IPAB. Obamacare’s dangerous IPAB consists of unelected bureaucrats who will be empowered to cut Medicare for Tennessee seniors.
Congressman Roe from northeast Tennessee has a bill to repeal IPAB, Protecting Seniors’ Access to Health Care Act (HR 849), and it has passed the Ways and Means Committee. Roe’s bill enjoys bipartisan support, with 265 cosponsors in the House—including 43 Democrats.
IPAB is a timely issue as Congress is running out of time to pass IPAB repeal, and one possible vehicle that is coming up, perhaps in the next few weeks, is the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) Reauthorization bill. The current thinking is the repeal of IPAB could be included in the reauthorization of CHIP. Conservatives in Tennessee should light up the phones in Congress and let Reps. Duncan, Roe, Black, Blackburn and others know that we want them to continue standing up for Tennessee values and support IPAB repeal as part of CHIP reauthorization. This could be our last shot to dismantle the worst part of Obamacare.
