WASHINGTON: Eight months before US President Barack Obama’s healthcare law goes prime time, a confederation of industry and business groups is ramping up its lobbying apparatus for an 11th-hour assault on the web of new taxes and regulations.
Medical device makers, health insurers, retailers and restaurants are waging what lobbyists call a coordinated effort to gain Senate Democratic support for overturning $130bn in taxes that will be used to fund the new law, and repealing a mandate requiring employers to provide insurance coverage for full-time workers or pay a fine.
The campaign is backed by two of the business world’s lobbying powerhouses: The US Chamber of Commerce and the National Federation of Independent Business, or NFIB. The latter had a leading role in 2012’s failed attempt to overturn the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in the Supreme Court.
Known as Obamacare, the 2010 law will bring sweeping change to the $2.8 trillion US healthcare industry starting January 1, 2014.
But with Congress mired in partisan gridlock, lobbyists are gearing up for a battle against the law’s costs that is likely to intensify as lawmakers shift attention to the 2014 congressional elections and the campaign donations they may need.
“It’s going to be a difficult uphill battle. This is the administration’s signature law. We’ve got a split Congress. But there’s an opportunity to make fixes. And if you can garner bipartisan support in the Senate, and find a way that the changes get paid for, I think it can get done,” said Amanda Austin, NFIB’s federal public policy director.
At issue are a 2.3 percent tax on medical devices valued at $30bn over the next 10 years, a $100bn health insurance premium tax and the employer mandate, which opponents say could cripple many small business with costly fines. The critics used Saturday, the third anniversary of the passage of ACA, to warn that the provisions could undercut economic growth, sap technical innovation and raise costs for Medicare beneficiaries and other consumers.
Reuters
