So far Barack Obama has cut $500 billion from Medicare to fund ObamaCare and has nominated multiple individuals who favor rationing to positions of power. But quick, someone tell me again that it’s Republicans who are threatening the social safety net.

The latest Obama nominee who favors rationing:

“If Americans are serious about curbing medical costs, they’ll have to face up to a much tougher issue than merely cutting waste, says Brookings Institution economist Henry J. Aaron.

“They’ll have to do what the British have done: ration some types of costly medical care — which means turning away patients from proven treatments.

“Cutting billions worth of ‘pure waste’ — in needless hospitalization, surplus beds, Cadillac-model machinery and superfluous tests — would only temporarily slow the growth in health spending, which now tops 10 percent a year, Aaron told a symposium sponsored by the American Academy of Physician Assistants last week in Reston.

Aaron, who Obama has nominated to the Social Security Advisory Board, also favors the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB). Remember that board? It was established by ObamaCare. The board is unaccountable to Congress and has charged with rationing medical treatments. Any decision the board makes to ration care could only be reversed by an act of Congress. In other words, a new law.

It should be noted that Aaron does have one problem with the IPAB: It’s just not powerful enough, in his opinion.

 “I admit that the provisions governing the IPAB are less than optimal. For example, recommendations regarding payments to acute and long-term care hospitals, hospices and inpatient rehabilitation and psychiatric facilities are off-limits until 2020; and those to clinical laboratories are off-limits until 2016. These politically motivated restrictions should be repealed as early as possible so the IPAB’s recommendations can comprehend the delivery system as a whole.”

Aaron says that “the survival and strengthening of the IPAB is of critical importance.”

In short, he demands Congress make the rationing board even less accountable and more powerful. He doesn’t think it yet has enough control over the lives of patients. He views the role of government as controlling the lives of the people. And he wants to extend that control over medical decisions for patients.