Drug and device makers face new taxes, fees

A Fox Business report shows the health overhaul is cutting deeper into drug and device makers' profits than many expected. "Research & development programs are already being drastically scaled back. There are dwindling incentives to create new drugs and vaccines. And the full impact to the drug and medical devices sectors from the new health care law is yet to be fully scoped out. … Drug companies like Pfizer, Bristol Myers Squibb and Eli Lilly are already disclosing profit hits from a little-understood and little-known tax on drug sales hidden in the law. Medical device makers, too, are curtailing R&D and possibly new jobs" (MacDonald, 10/28).

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This article was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.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.