Posted on 09/11/2009 3:34:19 PM PDT by truthandlife
Curbing health-care costs by making health care vastly more expensive appears to pass for logic in Washington, DC.
A new proposal circulated today by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus would force most clinical labs to pay a new $750 million annual fee as part of the federal government’s broader effort to pay for its health-care overhaul.
It was not immediately clear whether Baucus retracted his original plan to save $100 billion from the $1 trillion cost of the health-care reform by shedding $20 billion in Medicare payments for clinical lab services over 10 years.
However, according to The New York Times, Baucus “has apparently dropped” the plan, which would “require[e] Medicare beneficiaries to pay 20 percent of the amounts charged for laboratory tests.”
As part of Baucus’ new proposal, beginning in 2010 the government would slap a $750 million annual fee on clinical labs based on “market share, except for small businesses.”
According to The Wall Street Journal, Baucus, a Montana Democrat, was to discuss his proposal Tuesday with the Senate Finance Committee’s so-called Bipartisan Six, or the Gang of Six, which has “been seeking a compromise on health-care legislation for months.”
He would eventually need a majority of the committee’s 23 members, “several of whom are resentful at being excluded” from the Gang of Six confab, according to the Times.
A memo briefly describing the new proposal can be seen here. You can find the clinical lab news on the last line of the last page.
On its website, ACLA President Alan Mertz said the proposed clinical lab fees “translates into a disproportionate cut for laboratories, will damage efforts to enhance prevention and wellness, and raise health care costs.”
But look on the bright side: At least you’re not a health-insurance company, which stands to be on the hook for $6 billion in new annual taxes, or a pharma company, which would be hit with $2.3 billion in new annual fees, or a medical device maker, which would be forced to spend $4 billion in new annual fees.
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