Advertisement

  Stock Sponsor
Click here for full stock listings


Published: November 20, 2009 3:00 a.m.

Senate adds 5% ‘Botax’

Cosmetic surgery seen as cash source

Julie Hirschfeld Davis
Associated Press
Thumbnail

Associated Press

Dr. Jeffrey M. Kenkel gives patient Amy Andrade a Botox treatment in Dallas. The Senate health care plan includes a 5 percent tax on such treatments.

Advertisement
Also
1st Senate vote Saturday on health care

The Senate will conduct its first vote on health care legislation Saturday night, Majority Leader Harry Reid announced Thursday.

Democrats will need 60 votes to prevail.

Republicans have vowed to block passage of the measure, and Democrats must put up 60 votes to clear the way for a lengthy debate next month.

House votes stop Medicare payment cuts

The House voted Thursday to add more than $200 billion to the deficit to prevent steep Medicare payment cuts to doctors.

Republicans denounced the move as a political payoff to the American Medical Association, for whom the issue was a priority.

The measure was approved on a near party-line vote of 243-183.

Doctors are facing a 21 percent cut in Medicare reimbursement rates in January. The doctor payment legislation failed in the Senate last month.

WASHINGTON – They call it the “Botax.”

The White House and Senate Democrats have turned to a proposal to tax breast implants, tummy tucks, wrinkle-smoothing injections and other procedures as they search for ways to pay for the health care overhaul plan.

Vanity was an easy target. But it’s no joke to the drugmakers and people who perform the cosmetic nips and tucks. And they’re fighting back.

Skin-smoothing Botox injections could be hit hard. There were 4.7 million last year at an average cost of about $400 a visit, some including several injections.

“It is a random hit on an easy target that is only punitive and not corrective,” said Caroline Van Hove, a spokeswoman for Allergan Inc., the maker of Botox Cosmetic.

At issue is a proposal in the 10-year, nearly $1 trillion health care draft unveiled by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., that would slap a 5 percent excise tax on elective cosmetic surgeries and procedures. The plan, projected to raise $6 billion, wouldn’t apply to surgery to fix a deformity or injury but would include procedures such as facelifts, liposuction, cosmetic implants and teeth-whitening.

Lobbyists and aides familiar with the proposed 5 percent cosmetic surgery tax said Allergan and Johnson & Johnson along with others in the industry helped persuade lawmakers to slash it from a 10 percent tax, which had been projected to cost about $11 billion over a decade.