“One provision of the new healthcare law is a 2.3% excise tax on the medical device industry which will take effect in 2013. This study estimates the potential effect of the device tax on employment in the medical device industry. The study finds that the tax could reduce employment in the industry by cutting back on the demand for medical devices and by encouraging American firms to shift production overseas.”
“But when applied from on high by government bureaucrats, CER can yield dangerous results.
A new study from my Pacific Research Institute colleague Dr. Ben Zycher indicates that the government-led CER process will depress investment in pharmaceutical and medical device research and development by 10% to 12% — about $10 billion per year.
Less investment in R&D means fewer revolutionary medical advances that can improve or extend our lives.”
“Alas, ObamaCare may poison the well for reform if Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius decides that HSAs don’t meet the law’s requirements for mandated ‘essential’ coverage. Add this to the long list of ways that ObamaCare will inhibit innovation, but it’s getting hard to keep track of them all.”
“President Obama used to claim Medicare would save money by implementing the principle that if the ‘red pill’ works just as well as the ‘blue pill,’ but costs half as much, patients should get the red pill. That dangerously simplistic notion now boasts an enforcer created by last year’s Obamacare legislation.”
“A broad coalition of healthcare stakeholders lent their support Friday to repealing a controversial cost-cutting panel established under healthcare reform.
All told, some 270 stakeholder groups signed a letter to members of Congress urging them to repeal the Independent Payment Advisory Board. The IPAB is a panel of experts, appointed by the president, that will have the power to cut Medicare payments.”
“If this issue is any indiction, we have a clue as to how Obamacare got so screwed up. Those who drafted and now tout it have a shaky understanding of how markets operate and a built-in preference for top-down management. But it turns out that millions of people making individual health-care decisions are a lot smarter than the bureaucrats who constructed such a massive structure that no one can be expected to understand it and its consequences. Who knew?”
“Physician Hospitals of America (PHA) has filed a formal notice of appeal in its ongoing battle against growth restrictions in the healthcare reform law that make it nearly impossible for physician-owned hospitals to expand, according to PHA.
PHA and its coplaintiff, Texas Spine and Joint Hospital in Tyler, Texas, are arguing that provisions that prevent new or expanding physician-owned hospitals from qualifying for Medicare are unconstitutional, as well as limit patient access to high-quality hospitals.”
“This summer the IRS is set to finish writing the rules for one of ObamaCare’s new taxes–its 2.3% levy on medical device companies. Congress should wrest the pen from the taxman’s hand and scrap the tax entirely. Not only will it raise the prices American patients pay for life-saving medical equipment, it will also destroy thousands of high-quality jobs across the country.”
“Comparative effectiveness research could cost the nation trillions of dollars in economic activity and shorten the lives of Americans, concludes a new report from the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest.”
“This is ObamaCare’s so-called ‘cost-control’: politically motivated handouts that make prescription drugs more expensive while gutting one of the few policy mechanisms that’s proven somewhat successful at restraining the health care spending we’re already stuck with.”