The White House said Monday that it opposes a House bill to repeal a 2.3 percent tax on medical device companies because repeal wouldn’t do anything to improve healthcare, and instead would just go to profitable companies.
“The medical device industry, like others, will benefit from millions of new consumers who are gaining health coverage under the Affordable Care Act,” the Office of Management and Budget said in a statement of administration policy. It added that repeal would only “provide a large tax break to profitable corporations.”
“This excise tax is one of several designed so that industries that gain from the coverage expansion will help offset the cost of that expansion,” it added. “Its repeal would take away a funding source for financial assistance that is working to improve coverage and affordability and would increase the Federal deficit by $24.4 billion over 10 years.”
“In sum, H.R. 160 would increase the deficit to finance a permanent and costly tax break for industry without improving the health system or helping middle-class Americans,” the statement reads.
Critics of the tax note that it’s applied to revenues of medical device companies, not profits, and say the tax could drive those companies offshore.
The White House issued two other veto threats on Monday, including one that would repeal the ACA’s Independent Payment Advisory Board “and dismantle [it] even before it has a chance to work,” the policy statement reads.
The 15-person board is supposed to make recommendations to Congress on how to shrink Medicare growth, save the program money and increase the quality of care.
OMB also said that President Obama should veto the current draft of the annual spending authorization bill for intelligence agencies.
In addition to objecting to provisions dealing with military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, intelligence sharing with foreign governments, the creation of the Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center and reporting requirements, OMB said it can’t support a bill that locks in authorization levels consistent with the sequester. OMB also took issue with potential acquisition authority.
“The administration would object should the classified schedule of authorizations continue to authorize funding of unrequested, multi-billion dollar acquisition programs that would provide little new capability at the expense of core mission areas that address validated intelligence requirements,” the policy statement reads.
On Guantanamo Bay, the statement said the House bill would make it harder to close the detainee facility there.
“Rather than taking steps to bring this chapter of our history to a close, as the president has repeatedly called upon Congress to do, this bill aims to extend it,” the statement said.
The administration took issue because the bill goes beyond what the president outlined in his Feb. 25 memo establishing the center, which is supposed to connect “the dots regarding malicious foreign cyber threats to the nation and cyber incidents affecting U.S. national interests.”
