The recently approved healthcare reform legislation will extend coverage to 32 million uninsured Americans, change practices for coverage limitations or denials for people with existing medical conditions, and enable the self-employed to purchase insurance through state-based exchanges. As one would expect, money to cover healthcare reform needs to come from somewhere. In addition to going after medical insurance fraud, several taxes are included in the legislation (many in the life sciences industry) to help pay the bills, including:
- Drug manufacturers would pay $16 billion between 2011 and 2019.
- Health insurers would pay $47 billion over the same period.
- Medical device manufacturers would pay a 2.9 percent excise tax on the sale of any of their wares, beginning Jan. 1, 2013. Earlier drafts of the bill called for the additional fees for medical device makers to go into affect this year, but the final bill delayed that until 2013.