As a strong longtime opponent of President Obama’s health-care law, U.S. Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer (MO-9) today announced that he will be voting tomorrow to eliminate a board of unelected bureaucrats, created by the health-care law, that would have decision-making authority over the quality and accessibility of health-care for America’s seniors and could lead to the denial of care for them.

In recent months, several groups that had backed Obama’s health-care law, such as the American Medical Association and some Democratic Members of Congress voiced support for the Republican plan to repeal the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB).  Under the health-care law, IPAB was given the authority to develop and fast-track cost cuts to Medicare with very little opportunity for the American people to have input through their elected representatives in Congress. Many seniors and health-care providers are concerned that this board of unelected bureaucrats has been given too much authority at the expense of input from doctors and their patients.

“The president’s health-care law ranks as one of his and his party’s biggest broken promises: they said it would create jobs and it didn’t; they said it would lower costs and it hasn’t; and they said you could keep your own plan and doctor and you can’t,” Luetkemeyer said. “More than 70 percent of Missourians made it clear in 2010 that they opposed government-controlled health-care, and my job is to make sure their voices are heard in Washington. I remain staunchly committed to eliminating this costly and dangerous government takeover of health-care – piece by piece, if necessary – so this bill to repeal a board of unelected bureaucrats tasked with taking decisions out of the hands of seniors and their doctors is another step in the right direction.”

Tomorrow’s vote will mark the 26th time that the House has voted to repeal or defund part or all of the president’s health-care law, which was signed into law on March 23, 2010, after it was forced through Congress by Democratic majorities in the House and Senate. Luetkemeyer has signed onto a legal brief challenging the law’s constitutionality before the U.S. Supreme Court, which is scheduled to hear oral arguments on those challenges next week. Luetkemeyer also is a cosponsor of H.R. 452, the Medicare Decisions Accountability Act of 2011, which is the original bill repealing IPAB.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has concluded that the president’s health-care law will reduce the labor supply by 800,000 because of the law’s perverse incentives, which, according to CBO, “will effectively increase marginal tax rates,” thereby discouraging work. Other estimates are as high as 670,000 lost job opportunities per year. Meanwhile, despite President Obama’s claim the law would make care more affordable and “lower … premiums by $2,500 per family per year,” the CBO projects that the law’s new benefit mandates will force premiums to rise in the individual market by $2,100 per family.