Senate lawmakers have introduced legislation to repeal Obamacare’s medical device tax, one of the most hotly contested provisions in the healthcare law.
Five Democratic senators and four Republicans signed onto the bill, authored by Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah.
The Democratic support leaves the bill just one vote shy of the 60 votes needed to prevent opponents from blocking the bill with a filibuster.
The legislation would repeal the 2.3 percent tax on medical devices, which critics say increases consumer costs and discourages innovation in the field. It was implemented in January 2013 as an instrumental part of the Affordable Care Act. The tax is supposed to rase $20 billion by the end of the decade, all of it meant to help pay for the healthcare law.
But significant opposition has made the medical device tax one of the primary targets in the GOP effort to repeal the healthcare law. President Obama has threatened to veto previous repeal efforts.
“Every dollar medical device manufacturers spend on this onerous tax is a dollar taken away from American innovation, job growth and the ability to provide groundbreaking medical technologies to patients in need,” Hatch said Tuesday. “Both Republicans and Democrats understand just how bad this tax really is, and we owe it to the American people to ensure the development of life-saving medical devices are not plagued by high costs that will, ultimately, be passed on to patients.”
Republicans also plan other attacks on the healthcare law, including legislation increasing the work week definition under the law from 30 hours to 40 hours.
The Democrat supporters of the repeal are Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken, both of Minnesota, Joe Donnelly of Indiana, Pennsylvania’s Bob Casey, and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire.
