This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, March 26, 2012.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Totally separate from the issues debated this week at the Supreme Court over the Affordable Care Act is the

Independent Payment Advisory Board which poses a wholly different challenge to the Constitution.

Michael Cannon, Director of Health Policy studies at the Cato Institute, comments.

The Supreme Court is right now hearing oral arguments on Obamacare's individual mandate

and its mandate that state Medicaid programs expand to include

more people.

Those two parts of Obamacare are unconstitutional, but they're not the only parts of Obamacare that are unconstitutional.

They're not even the most unconstitutional parts of Obamacare.

I think that distinction goes to the Independent Payment advisory board. This is a panel of

unelected government officials that will have the power to change Medicare payment policy, how Medicare pays doctors, how much Medicare pays doctors

and hospitals.

It will have the power to do a lot more than that, however.

It will have the power effectively to raise

taxes to impose conditions on federal funds to states and even to appropriate

money without congressional authorization.

Now once this board known as I-PAB issues one of its proposals,

Obamacare requires the Secretary of Health and Human Services to enact that proposal unless Congress either strikes

it down, invalidates it, or offers a substitute.

But it's very difficult for Congress to just reject one of these iPad

proposals. That requires a three-fifths vote in the Senate is what the law is what Obamacare requires. So in essence what

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