Labs grumble over co-pays, new fees for Medicare lab work

Roll Call reports that big labs — including ones like Quest Diagnostics — are unhappy with a Senate Finance Committee proposal to increase taxes for labs that perform Medicare services.

The tax would raise $750 million a year to help pay for health care reform. "Although Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) did agree to drop (a) co-payment issue (for beneficiaries), the panel ended up proposing an annual fee, or tax, on the labs, most likely based on each lab's revenue."

A similar backlash is also going on against a proposal to levy $4 billion in annual fees on the medical device industry, Roll Call reports (Ackley, 9/10).

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This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.