CHANGE: Remember the so-called “death panels”? They’re gone, repealing another key and unpopular component of Obamacare. “It was always a stretch to claim that Republicans had ‘basically repealed Obamacare’ just by repealing the individual mandate. But getting rid of the individual mandate and the Medicare Independent Payment Advisory Board? Now we’re getting somewhere. The IPAB board was created under Obamacare and given the duty to slow the growth of Medicare spending, but no board members were ever nominated. But as written under the law, IPAB would have enjoyed a lot of power over what Medicare was willing to pay for and how much, with little opportunity for Congress to overrule their decisions. This deal gets rid of IPAB for good.”

Good.

And the above is just one item in Jim Geraghty’s look at the good and the bad in the spending caps deal.