Senate Republicans think they can divide Democrats and push through a small repeal within the Obamacare law, a proposal that has backing from a number of Democrats. The medical device tax is one of the funding provisions in the law, and because it's a tax, of course, Republicans hate it. A number of Democrats support repeal of it as well, because plenty of them have device manufacturers in their states. Republicans are going to try get the repeal into a
tax bill that should be coming to the floor this week. But it's not at all clear it's going to work.
Democrats, who are split on whether to repeal the excise tax, control the Senate floor calendar and haven’t decided whether to allow a vote.
“I’m not sure this is the right time or the right vehicle,” said Senator Bob Casey, a Pennsylvania Democrat who supports rescinding the tax.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, didn’t explicitly rule out a vote on the device tax. He said the device companies are having success under the health law. […]
“I’m not going to cry any big tears over the device folks,” Reid said. “Their profits were huge last year.”
It's a 2.3 percent excise tax on things like pacemakers and artificial hips. The manufacturers pay it, rather than the consumer—although the companies argue they have to pass that tax on to hospitals and providers, which would pass it on to insurers, which would pass it on to enrollees, so eventually the consumer is going to have to pay more. But that cost, as the Congressional Research Service reports,
would be negligible.
If even a Democratic supporter of the repeal, like Bob Casey, is lukewarm on it being dealt with now and Harry Reid doesn't see any urgency in moving it, this Republican effort might fail. It should. Republicans shouldn't be given the opportunity to have any kind of victory—even a small one—on Obamacare at this point.