"The board is seen by industry executives as a threat to profits"
Yeah, even if those companies rarely, if ever, make profit while paying out huge CEO salaries.
"Biotech fights Medicare cost panel; Kerry is a target of lobbying effort" by Tracy Jan, Globe Staff / June 27, 2011
WASHINGTON — Robert Coughlin faced a busy agenda recently when he landed in Washington. He and a team of Massachusetts life sciences executives attended an evening fund-raiser for Senator John F. Kerry. The next day, he pressed his case to Kerry’s staff members. Coughlin’s objective: get the Massachusetts Democrat to help torpedo a new government panel designed to reduce Medicare costs.
Coughlin, president and chief executive of the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council, is part of an army of health care industry representatives from Massachusetts and around the country who want to block creation of the Independent Payment Advisory Board, a key piece of President Obama’s health care overhaul law.
The board is designed to target wasteful and inefficient Medicare spending, and advocates say it will help rein in the federal government’s massive health care budget. But the board, which could begin work as early as 2013, is seen by industry executives as a threat to profits....
Also see: Biotech Bawling
Industry lobbyists have won over Senator Scott Brown who this month signed on to a Republican Senate bill repealing the board.
Representative Michael Capuano of Somerville, a Democrat, is also backing a repeal. Capuano, whose congressional district contains more biotechnology companies than any other in the country, cosponsored the House bill calling for repeal....
Related: Healthcare Coup of Congress
How much you want to bet they get what they want?
That argument doesn’t surprise John Rother, executive vice president of policy and strategy at AARP. The powerful lobbying group for the elderly views the advisory board as crucial to holding down Medicare costs. “The whole rationale for IPAB is to do an end run around the lobbying power of certain health industries, so obviously they are trying to protect their turf,’’ said Rother. “It’s so easy to scare old people but hopefully, people can see the motivations.’’
I was told we were all in this together.
Insurance executives support the board’s mission. Health care costs 50 to 60 percent more in the United States than in any other industrialized country because of high payments to doctors, hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies, said James Roosevelt Jr. president and chief executive of Tufts Health Plan, the third-largest health insurance plan in Massachusetts at nearly 800,000 members.
If all those other nations can somehow do it better you have to a$k WTF i$ wrong with AmeriKa?
Leaders of some physician groups say that while they are concerned about shrinking reimbursements, their stance against the panel is about more than the bottom line.
“As you cut compensation to physicians even further, there is concern that it will be harder for patients to gain access,’’ said Dr. Chris Chiodo, an orthopedic surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and past president of the Massachusetts Orthopedic Association. “As Medicare tightens the thumbscrews on the docs more and more, it’s a much more difficult environment to practice in.’’
The Massachusetts Medical Society, while supportive of the overall health care reform law, is concerned that the panel could also limit patient access to expensive, life-saving new technologies, procedures, and medicines, in addition to cutting reimbursements to doctors, said Dr. Lynda Young, president of the group....
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Related: Slow Saturday Special: Biotech is a Bust
Biotech Kept VenCap
