The shining moment for a potential medical device excise tax repeal could come on the heels of the Obamacare-debt ceiling bill. If the medical device tax is in fact repealed as part of the debt ceiling deal Congress pushes through (or doesn’t), Paul Keckley, the former Executive Director of the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions, said in his Weekly Memo it won’t be as easy as it sounds to implement:
And make no mistake: eliminating the medical device tax– a chip worth $30 billion over 10 years—might appease some. But it will be followed by negotiations with insurance plans, drug manufacturers and hospitals and long term care providers who collectively face almost $500 billion in new taxes over the decade. So the medical device chip is not one and done.
