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Thursday, July 14, 2011

More on IPAB and the risk of regulatory capture

See here for a recent report on views of the IPAB.

Particularly interesting were comments of someone who has been there and done things in the setting of a very important and powerful governmental appointed post.

Bruce Vladecks, the former head of CMS under Bill Clinton, had this to say :

"In the short term, it might theoretically work," he said. But the history with other independent regulatory agencies, like the Interstate Commerce Commission and the Civil Aeronautics Board is that over time "the regulated industries tend to capture them; and they tend to do more to protect the regulated industries than they do to protect consumers."


Considering the legislative hurdles that Obamacare put in place for Congress to over ride the edicts of IPAB, capturing IPAB would be prize well worth capturing.

2 comments:

Roy M. Poses MD said...

I would take this objection more seriously if all those critics of IPAB had already shown their opposition to how the RUC currently operates, given that the RUC is ALREADY an excellent example of regulatory capture Also it already controls how physicians are paid, and already has tilted the playing field in favor of procedures, and away from primary and other cognitive care. See:
http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/RUC

james gaulte said...

Both AMA and ACP have expressed their continuing support for ACA but both have also offered criticism of IPAB.AMA is not likely to consider the RUC as an example of regulatory capture since,in my view,they are the captors.