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- The Independent Payment Advisory Board, or IPAB, was to be a fifteen-member United States Government agency created in 2010 by sections 3403 and 10320 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act which was to have the explicit task of achieving specified savings in Medicare without affecting coverage or quality. Under previous and current law, changes to Medicare payment rates and program rules are recommended by MedPAC but require an act of Congress to take effect. The system creating IPAB granted IPAB the authority to make changes to the Medicare program with the Congress being given the power to overrule the agency's decisions through supermajority vote. The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 repealed IPAB before it could take effect. Beginning in 2013, the Chief Actuary of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services determined in particular years the projected per capita growth rate for Medicare for a multi-year period ending in the second year thereafter (the "implementation year"). If the projection exceeded a target growth rate, IPAB was to develop a proposal to reduce Medicare spending in the implementation year by a specified amount. If it was required to develop a proposal, the Board was to submit that proposal in January of the year before the implementation year; thus, the first proposal could have been submitted in January 2014 to take effect in 2015. If the Board failed to submit a proposal that the Chief Actuary certifies would achieve the savings target, the Secretary of Health and Human Services was to submit a proposal that would achieve that amount of savings. The Secretary was then to implement the proposal unless Congress enacted resolutions to override the Board's (or the Secretary's) decisions under a fast-track procedure that the law set forth. A related group, the Specialty Society Relative Value Scale Update Committee (or Relative Value Update Committee; RUC), composed of physicians associated with the American Medical Association, also advises the government about pay standards for Medicare patient procedures, according to news reports. On February 9, 2018, the United States Congress voted to repeal the Independent Payment Advisory Board as a part of the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018, by a vote of 71−28 in the US Senate and by a vote of 240−186 in US House of Representatives. Shortly thereafter that day, President Trump signed the budget bill into law, thereby repealing the IPAB. (en)
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