Worth noting from Chris Jacobs, Senior Policy Analyst, Joint Economic Committee, Senate Republican Staff:
The President claims that IPAB will help reduce costs in a pain-free fashion. But that’s not what he said in 2009. In an interview with the Washington Post that January, he said this about capping Medicare spending (audio excerpt here):
What I think is probably the wrong approach is to think, well, the way to solve this is Medicare is spending X, and we’re just going to cap it at Y, and whatever that means in terms of people being thrown off the rolls or cutting benefits, you know, then so be it. Because that doesn’t solve the underlying problem which is health care costs themselves are still escalating at a 6 or 7 or 8 percent rate. All we’re doing is we’re just saying to people, you know what, you’re going to get less health care.
But that’s exactly what Obamacare does – it caps Medicare spending at pre-defined labels. And according to Barack Obama circa 2009, that method – which he dubbed the “wrong approach” – means seniors are “going to get less health care.”
