Strib: Bachmann should rethink effort to repeal Medicare reform

The Star Tribune editorial board took issue with a movement among Republicans to repeal an important part of health care reform: the Independent Payment Advisory Board. The IPAB will work to reduce costs associated with Medicare, the Strib wrote on Monday. Republicans have offered a series of legislation to repeal the IPAB, and one member of Minnesota’s delegation has signed on in support: Rep. Michele Bachmann.

Bachmann was an original signer of one such repeal bill back in March when Republicans were offering a flurry of bills to repeal various portions of the recently passed health care reform legislation.

Most important perhaps is the legislation’s impact on one of Bachmann’s key issues: cost control.

“[T]hese bills would obliterate one of the most promising proposals to date to get the deficit under control,” the paper wrote. “Thankfully, only one Minnesota politician signed on as a cosponsor to either of these bills — Sixth District Rep. Michele Bachmann. Bachmann’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment Monday. Bachmann needs to rethink her support. These bills are not in Minnesota’s — or the nation’s — best interest.”

The Strib’s editorial comes after a similar one by the Washington Post:

“Lawmakers are happy to proclaim the importance of fiscal discipline and the need to get health costs under control. But they balk at taking particular steps to make that happen, especially when those steps discomfit, as they inevitably will, one special interest or another.”

The New York Times weighed in as well:

“Republicans claim to be deeply worried about the deficit — their favorite political target, followed closely by President Obama’s relentlessly demonized health care reform. So why are they so determined to overturn one of the central cost-control mechanisms of the new reform law?”