Industry lobbies hard to snuff out tax on medical devices
If there ever was a piece of legislation influenced by campaign contributions and lobbyists, the bill to repeal a 2.3 percent excise tax on medical device manufacturers, which the House passed last Thursday, would be it.
Forty-six Democrats joined 234 Republicans to repeal the tax, which was authorized by the Affordable Care Act as one of the ways to pay for the expansion of health insurance to millions of uninsured Americans. The tax went into effect on Jan. 1, 2013, and is expected to generate between $26 billion and $29 billion over 10 years, according to Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation.
Even though the medical device makers are gaining financially now that more Americans can afford their products, most of them hate the tax — so much so that the industry has spent $109.7 million lobbying in Washington since the it went into effect, according to MapLight, a nonprofit group that tracks and reports on money’s impact on politics.
In addition to all that money, MapLight found that the biggest medical device makers and their trade group have donated $19.5 million to House members since Oct. 1, 2012, most of whom voted for the repeal.
OpenSecrets, another watchdog group, found that 27 of the 32 Democrats who co-sponsored the bill received money from the medical device industry.
The House member who has received the most in donations is Rep. Erik Paulsen, the Minnesota Republican who has been the industry’s go-to guy in its effort to kill the tax. MapLight says Paulsen, the chief sponsor of the Protect Medical Innovation Act of 2015 — the official name of the repeal bill — has received $109,049 from the industry. Coming in second is Democratic Rep. Ron Kind of Wisconsin, who has taken in $55,400.
The focus will now be on the Senate, where passage is less certain but where five Democrats, including both of Minnesota’s senators, Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar, have signed on as co-sponsors of that chamber’s repeal bill. In fact, says OpenSecrets, the industry has been more benevolent to those two recently than anybody else on that side of the Capitol. Franken has received $47,249 in contributions while Klobuchar has received $39,900.
If you’re wondering why the industry is so generous to the Minnesotans it’s because the Land of 10,000 lakes is also the land where a lot of medical devices are made.
There’s more to this story. Click here to read the rest at the Center for Public Integrity.
This story is part of Wendell Potter commentary. Former CIGNA executive-turned-whistleblower Wendell Potter writes about the health care industry and the ongoing battle for health reform. Click here to read more stories in this blog.
Related stories
Medical device industry lobbies IRS, Congress to dodge health law tax
ANALYSIS: Republican field shies away from history on insurance mandate
Copyright 2014 The Center for Public Integrity. This story was published by The Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative news organization in Washington, D.C.
