OMB Sends Letter to the Hill Recommending MedPAC Reform

As alluded earlier the White House is preparing to really throw its shoulder behind the idea of reforming the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission as a way to get some more curve-bending into health care legislation. The latest sign of that is a letter from OMB Director Peter Orszag addressed to key legislative leaders in the House and Senate. The letter touts Senator John Rockefeller’s MedPAC legislation but really gets behind a slightly different idea.

Per the OMBlog:

The Independent Medicare Advisory Council (IMAC) would be an independent, non-partisan body of doctors and other health experts, appointed by the President, confirmed by the Senate, and serving for five-year terms. The IMAC would issue recommendations as long as their implementation would not result in any increase in the aggregate level of net expenditures under the Medicare program; and either would improve the quality of medical care received by the program’s beneficiaries or improve Medicare’s efficiency.

As with the military base-closing commissions, this proposed legislation would require the President to approve or disapprove each set of the IMAC’s recommendations as a package. If the President accepts the IMAC’s recommendations, Congress would then have 30 days to intervene with a joint resolution before the Secretary of Health and Human Services is authorized to implement them. If either the President disapproves the recommendations of the IMAC or Congress passes such a joint resolution, the recommendations would be null and void, and current law would remain in effect.

Orszag also shows why he’s not just a wonk, he’s also a diplomat. The way I earlier described the virtues of this idea was “that ‘Congress’ and ‘sound management of public policy issues’ aren’t really concepts that go together.” Orszag puts it differently, “This approach would free Congress from the burdens of dealing with highly technical issues such as Medicare reimbursement rates while rightly giving them, your representatives, a say in the matter.”

Free them from the burden!