From Reuters:
The powerful healthcare industry hopes a congressional “super committee” tasked with slashing America’s debt will fail and is lobbying instead for automatic spending cuts that will kick in if the panel deadlocks.
Much of the health sector believes the spending cuts, which will be triggered if the committee fails to find at least $1.2 trillion in savings over 10 years, will be less draconian than any deficit-reduction deal, according to lobbyists and healthcare groups interviewed by Reuters.
Under the trigger mechanism — a process called sequestration — automatic spending cuts of $1.2 trillion will begin in 2013. But programs such as the Medicaid healthcare program for the poor and the Social Security retirement program are totally protected from cuts, while Medicare, the healthcare program for the elderly, would face only a 2 percent cut to providers.
Chris Jennings, a former healthcare adviser to Democratic President Bill Clinton, said: “Virtually all healthcare stakeholders would prefer the sequester to take place rather than worry about the near inevitability of the super committee coming up with a package of deeper and broader cuts.”
Mark Hayes, who lobbies on behalf of healthcare clients and is the former chief health counsel and health policy director for the Senate Finance Committee, said healthcare companies would actively push for the automatic spending cuts.
“The message will be communicated to their members of Congress, through all the usual channels including letters, town hall meetings, phone calls and personal meetings,” he told Reuters.
The bipartisan committee, made up of six Republican and six Democratic lawmakers, was formed as part of an August deal to raise the U.S. debt limit. It meets for the first time on Thursday and must report by late November, but if it fails to reach agreement, or if Congress does not endorse its plan, the automatic cuts are triggered.
The healthcare industry has one of the most powerful lobbying forces in the United States.
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