On Thursday a state board could change Oregon's Medicaid program to deny costly care to poor patients who need it most.
Like most such panels, including the Affordable Care Act's Independent Payment Advisory Board, the Oregon Health Evidence Review Commission, or HERC, claims to be merely concerned with what supposedly works and what doesn't. Their real targets are usually advanced, costly treatments. That's why HERC, for example, proposed in May that Medicaid should not cover "treatment with intent to prolong survival" for cancer patients who likely have fewer than two years left to live. HERC presents an example to show their reasoning for such a decision: "In no instance can it be justified to spend $100,000 in public resources to increase an individual's expected survival by three months when hundreds of thousands of Oregonians are without any form of health insurance."
https://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324522504579000560184822956.html
Note that Oregon of course pays for assisted suicide.
The same thing will happen with ObamaCare, though note that even Democrats are running from IPAB:
A wave of vulnerable Democrats over the past three months has signed on to bills repealing the board’s powers, including Sen. Mark Pryor (Ark.) and Reps. Ron Barber (Ariz.), Ann Kirkpatrick (Ariz.), Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.) and Elizabeth Esty (Conn.).
...
The Senate and House measures currently have 32 and 192 co-sponsors, respectively, including 22 Democrats in the House. Co-sponsors include lawmakers like Rep. John Barrow (D-Ga.), a longtime GOP target.
https://thehill.com/blogs/healthwatch/health-reform-implementation/316045-obamacare-cost-cutting-board-faces-growing-opposition-from-democrats?utm_content=bufferf1e67&utm_source=buffer&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Buffer