Medical technology industry pushes for permanent end to device tax
The medical technology industry once again is pushing for a permanent end to a medical device tax they’ve worked with Congress to shelve for almost four years now. The 2.3% tax on medical device sales that is part of the Affordable Care Act has already been on temporary hiatus since the beginning of 2016 and is scheduled to expire at the end of this year.
“We are in the fourth year of two consecutive two-year suspensions,” AdvaMed CEO Scott Whitaker said Monday afternoon. AdvaMed represents hundreds of medical device makers, including Abbott Laboratories, Johnson & Johnson, Medtronic and Stryker.
Before it was put on hiatus, the IRS collected between $1 billion and $2 billion a year in 2013, 2014 and 2015. Read more from Forbes contributor Bruce Japsen.
MAKING THE ROUNDS
Three Kenyan women who specialized in the care of children with cancer were among the passengers on Ethiopian Airlines flight 302, returning home after a meeting of The Society of Pediatric Oncology in Africa meeting held in Cairo, Egypt when their plane crashed just minutes after take-off from Addis Ababa.
UnitedHealth Group and its pharmacy benefit manager, OptumRx, are expanding a new program that passes along pharmacy discounts they get from drug manufacturer rebates to all new employer customers. It’s the latest effort by health insurers and PBMs to pass along more prescription drug savings to customers in the face of intense criticism from employers, Congress and the Trump administration.
The American Nurses Association isn’t ready to join a growing movement of union nurses in backing the single payer version of Medicare for All. Like many national physician groups, nurses generally support universal health coverage, but they aren’t all ready to throw their weight behind a Medicare for All approach that would upend the private insurance industry’s role in administering health benefits.
NEWS YOU CAN USE
The CDC recently published a report in the Mortality and Morbidity Weekly Report describing a 2017 ordeal of a six-year-old Oregonian boy who didn't get any immunizations, including the tetanus vaccine. He later ended up in the hospital for 57 days, leading to over $800,000 in medical costs.
This was the first reported case of a child getting tetanus in Oregon in over 30 years. The boy suffered a cut to his head while playing outdoors on a farm. His parents did not take him to a doctor but instead cleaned and sutured his wound at home. Read more.
Did someone forward you this newsletter? Subscribe here.
