A recent article in Cleveland.com discusses how the health care reform bill will affect the elderly and people with disabilities who use wheelchairs, walkers, oxygen and other medical devices?
- Who will ultimately pay the medical equipment tax?
Will a new medical device tax in the bill make it harder for them to get needed equipment?
To help offset the cost of insuring the uninsured the reform establishes a 2.3 percent excise tax on medical device manufacturers that starts in 2013. This is a controversial move that has consumers, advocacy groups, and industry concerned.
Here’s how the Cleveland.com article has it shaping up:
Advocacy groups for the elderly and people with disabilities say the bill’s requirements that insurers cover people with pre-existing medical conditions without capping yearly or lifetime claims will benefit those who use medical devices, although there’s a good chance at least some of the medical device tax will be passed along to their users.
“I have no doubt that manufacturers and importers of medical devices will try to figure out ways to lessen the impact of this tax,” says Peter W. Thomas, a Washington, D.C. attorney who specializes in disability and rehabilitation issues and reimbursement. “One of the key ways is to pass the costs onto consumers.”
United Spinal Association legislative director Andrew Morris adds that a provision that requires Medicare users to rent a power wheelchair for 13 months before they can purchase it may result in health problems for wheelchair users, like pressure sores or infections, from equipment that isn’t custom tailored to their needs.
“Once a power wheelchair is fitted for someone, it can’t just be put back on shelf and given to someone else,” says Morris. “It takes time and money to do all that adjustment. If a person is renting a power wheelchair, it is possible it won’t be fitted to their needs, which could cause secondary problems.”
Unfortunately in the medical technology and medical device fields, this is but one of many incremental increases in the costs of business that are assumed by the manufacturers and pushed unto the consumer. Yes, it will have an impact on prices, but there will be many other things that will increase medical device prices this year and next, much the same as they have been increasing in years past. The only real difference with respect to this particular price increase is the amount of national media that health care reform has received and thus the tax merely takes on added significance.
What manufacturer is right outside Cleveland? Invacare, the largest provider of home medical equipment, including wheelchairs. Who is going to benefit from the added volume of newly insured people on private insurance and on Medicaid? Who is going to benefit from provisions in the bill that help people stay at home and not go to nursing homes? And who has been trying to kill health care reform, because they will pay part of the 2.3% windfall tax? Invacare!