to health CARE, thus limiting costs to Medicare -- which will spread to all health care. It's the kind of thing the Chicago School of Economics' folks like: Find ways to limit access to any social safety net, with the objective being to keep doing so and weakening it to the point of being useless. Then announce that government can't run program A, B...X, Y, Z. Then privatize, privatize, privatize.

They are not that far from BushCo and St. Ronnie's approach to things.

How to pay for health care? Simple. Single payer.

Not Pamper the Parasites. Not increase access to the body politic for the parasites. Not twist into some kind of Escher pretzel to make sure for-profit Big Insurance Parasites keep their comfortable ever-rising revenues.

Note that Obama does not speak of cutting what the parasites get in revenue, only limit their increases to 50-70%* of what they might have demanded. The BIPs are agreeing to this (while putting nothing in contract form) since their recent ravenous increases in premiums have begun killing their hosts, businesses and individual purchases of health insurance.

*Instead of a family premium going up $6K in 10 years, he hopes --HOPES!-- to keep the increases down to $3-4K.... Parasite Preservation Act of 2009.

From his recent press conference:

... If somebody told you that there is a plan out there that is guaranteed to double your health-care costs over the next 10 years, that's guaranteed to result in more Americans losing their health care, and that is by far the biggest contributor to our federal deficit, I think most people would be opposed to that. Well, that's the status quo. That's what we have right now. So if we don't change, we can't expect a different result.

And that's why I think this is so important -- not only for those families out there who are struggling and who need some protection from abuses in the insurance industry or need some protection from skyrocketing costs, but it's also important for our economy.

And by the way, it's important for families' wages and incomes.

One of the things that doesn't get talked about is the fact that when premiums are going up, and the costs to employers are going up, that's money that could be going into people's wages and incomes. And over the last decade, we basically saw middle-class families; their incomes and wages flatlined.
Part of the reason is, because health-care costs are gobbling that up. And that's why I say, if we can -- even if we don't reduce our health-care costs by the $6,000 that we're paying more than any other country on earth, if we just reduced it by 2 (thousand dollars) or 3,000 (dollars), that would mean money in people's pockets. And that's possible to do. But we're going to have to make some changes.

As you said:

... the group of professionals will make more pure decisions. ...

How's that been working out for us?

Sounds like "entitlement reform" to me. Surely that's the "responsible" policy option...

not apply to all health insurance/coverage?? Good question, Dean. Lots of good questions.

... If the plan is to promote good medicine, why are we just doing it for the elderly receiving Medicare? Why don't we want good medicine for everyone?

Specifically, the government could apply the experts' judgments on appropriate procedures to any insurance plan that receives government support. This would mean that any plan that enrolls patients with government subsidies would be bound by the expert panel's judgment. If we are confident that our experts will be acting based on sound medical evidence, why shouldn't their assessment apply everywhere?

In addition to the "why not" question, there is also a very important reason why we should want everyone else to be treated like Medicare beneficiaries: quality assurance. There is a disturbing tendency among our Washington elites to treat seniors as a species apart. For example, people who complain about high tax rates on the wealthy have no trouble proposing means-testing schemes for Social Security and Medicare that would impose far higher effective tax rates on middle income retirees.

If the same rules for medical procedures were applied to everyone as to the elderly, it would be far less likely that genuinely useful procedures would be excluded from coverage just to save the government a few dollars. [Damn straight!] With far more eyes on the process, and far more interested parties, we could have much greater confidence that the panel's decisions were really based on sound evidence.

This raises another important issue about these sorts of medical panels: conflicts of interest. Top medical researchers have a bad habit of taking large consulting fees from folks like pharmaceutical companies, medical supply companies and insurance companies. In many cases, they even hold stakes in these companies.

These medical experts are undoubtedly all very honorable people. However, it simply is not fair to ask the public to trust the health of their loved ones to a medical expert who got a $50,000 check from a company that stands to profit or lose large sums of money depending on their decision.

Any panel must come with strict conflict-of-interest guidelines. For example, something like a complete ban, for at least the prior five years, on any fees from any company directly impacted by the panel's decision would be a good start.

Baker goes on with this zinger:

...if the choice is between no panel or a panel comprised of people on the payroll of the drug companies and their ilk, then no panel would be the better outcome. The fact that putting together a conflict-free panel is actually a problem is a testament to the corruption of our health care system.

He closes by saying he approves of such a board:

...President Obama's plan to weed out ineffective and wasteful medical procedures is a good one. But we should not single out Medicare beneficiaries as guinea pigs in this adventure, and definitely must ensure that the people to whom we entrust our health are not on the industry payroll. (My emphasis and aside in brackets)

... how do we get bulldozed into doing something that's worse than nothing?

Any actual "linkage" that IMAC came from anywhere.
In your post you say "even an idea like the IMAC, which came out of the Right Wing wishbox" but there's no actual linkage to how IMAC came to be or who proposed it or when.
Are you referring to Steve Benen's post where he says, "After all, the IMAC idea was proposed by the right, and accepted by the left, as part of a larger effort to save money and take political considerations out of the process." ?
Because that isn't helpful to a discussion with a winger.

I've re-read every article cited but am still unable to discern why IMAC came from the right except Benen says it, then Krugman quotes Benen saying it, then you link to both Benen saying it and Krugman quoting Benen saying it.
I'll happily admit to having the comprehension fails if I missed a crucial piece. I'm interested in rebutting IMAC talking points from the Right.

But he's still under contract.

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NOTE Today, I wouldn't do the age-ist snark. Live and learn, albeit slowly.