This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, November 26, 2013.

I'm Caleb Brown. The Senate moved to destroy the filibuster for most presidential

nominees makes it far easier for the president to lock in his

appointments to a controversial powerful health care board called I-PAB, the Independent Payments

Advisory Board. Cato's Director of Health Policy Studies, Michael Cannon comments.

One of the most controversial parts of Obamacare is a new board that the law creates to run

not just the Medicare program, but really reach beyond the Medicare program,

run anything related to the Medicare program.

And that basically encompasses the entire health care sector.

So this board is called the Independent Payment Advisory Board.

And it has, despite its supporters' denials that it can do this,

it has the power not just to ration care within Medicare by setting

prices but really it could also ration care by denying care for specific

services it could by denying care for specific services.

It could, because there's so few constraints

on this independent payment advisory board or I PAB,

I PAB could raise taxes.

I-PAB can appropriate funds to the Department of Health and Human Services to carry out its own dictates.

And so what this board really has are legislative powers that the Constitution reserves to Congress.

And then Obamacare goes even farther by specifying the rules under which Congress can either make changes to these

iPad proposals or block them.

And so these rules are pretty restrictive.

...