The Obamacare individual mandate was dropped precipitously when the tax-reform package was signed into law just before Christmas.
Now a second much-reviled Obamacare provision, its “death panel,” has been repealed in this week’s two-year spending plan adopted by Congress in the wee hours of Friday morning and signed by President Trump.
Democrats mocked the “death panel” moniker, but the Independent Payment Advisory Board, which was never made functional, comissioned 15 unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats to “limit private, nongovernmental spending on health care.”
Critics, such as Sarah Palin, who popularized the “death panel” label, argued that by limiting spending, the panel effectively could determine who would live and who would die.
The National Right to Life Committee, a coalition of 50 state affiliates and more than 3,000 local chapters, praised the elimination of the board.
“Little attention was given to the IPAB’s sweeping powers to limit not just Medicare spending, but also healthcare paid for with nongovernmental dollars,”
