
It would be a stretch to call it an offer she couldn’t refuse, but in the end what choice did Rep. Niki Tsongas (D-Mass.) have but to consider the pleas of the men in her Capitol Hill office last Thursday?
Tsongas represents a stretch of Massachusetts that runs from the edge of Natick to the tip of New Hampshire and includes the lion’s share of the I-495 beltway, where you can’t throw a trocar without hitting a company that either makes a medical device or services a medical device company.
So there she was last Thursday, with a vote looming to repeal the 2.3% medical device tax scheduled for the following week. Tsongas was already facing a sustained attack by the National Republican Congressional Committee over the levy and her "commitment to her party’s limitless spending addiction and job-killing agenda;" she was also facing pressure from her challenger for the seat she’s held since 2007 to take a stand for the district’s largest employers. Now executives from several of those companies were standing before her, asking for her vote in favor of repeal.
CEOs and senior executives from Boston Scientific (NYSE:BSX), Zoll Medical (NSDQ:ZOLL) and Volcano (NSDQ:VOLC), among others, met with the Bay State congresswoman to deliver a message: Kill the tax or Massachusetts jobs are going to be lost, either from outsorucing overseas, layoffs or hiring freezes.
That message was being delivered in reps’ and senators’ offices across Capitol Hill by 200 medical device representatives from the Medical Device Manufacturers Assn. Even former NBA legend Bill Walton got in on the full-court press, lobbying for his employer NuVasive Inc. (NSDQ:NUVA). It was all part of the final push of a sustained campaign to put a face on the medical device tax.
Tsongas was sympathetic but non-committal. She had voted in favor of the Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act and wanted to know more about how the GOP planned to replace a $30.5 billion hole before she would vote for a repeal. But yesterday that uncertainty vanished as Tsongas cast a vote in favor of H.R. 436, the Protect Medical Innovation Act of 2012, along with 35 other Dems.
Tsongas’ communications director, John Noble, told MassDevice.com that the meeting wasn’t the lynchpin for her decision on the repeal measure.
"I wouldn’t charaterize it as some sort of ‘eureka moment,’" Noble told us, adding that the medical device tax has been "something she’s been mindful of" since the healthcare reform act passed 2 years ago. Tsongas has long been aware of the impact the tax could have on jobs in the medical device industry, he said.
Tsongas signed at least 2 letters to the House leadership expressing concerns over the tax, both in its original $40 billion version and then when it was cut in half later that year. Those letters, addressed to then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), were signed by several Massachusetts Democrats, including Reps. Michael Capuano, William Delahunt and James McGovern. But apart from Tsongas, Rep. Bill Keating was the sole Commonwealth legislator to vote for the repeal bill. Keating was elected in 2010, after the letters had been sent.
But support from a handful of House Democrats proved 1 thing the bill’s author has been saying for months now.
"There are some Democratic members who have not signed on to the repeal bill because they’re a little nervous about acknowledging that the healthcare law they may have voted for isn’t perfect," H.R. 436 sponsor Rep. Erik Paulsen told MassDevice.com in February. "They’re more inclined to vote for it if they get the opportunity to vote on the floor, rather than sign their name on it and deal with a sort of push-back among some of their own base," Paulsen added.
Tsongas said in a statement issued by her office late Thursday that the sweeping nature of the tax moved her to vote for repeal.
"When the tax was originally proposed, I worked to try and reduce its impact and pledged to ensure that it would not harm smaller device manufacturers before its implementation," she wrote. "Unfortunately, the tax has not been amended to distinguish between large, well-established device manufacturers with thousands of employees and those smaller, emerging companies, many of which are located in Massachusetts.
"As such, the excise tax has the potential to harm these smaller, innovative medical device manufacturers. It has the potential to limit their ability to raise capital and foster the innovations that contribute to our nation’s medical capabilities as well as the growth of jobs in the Commonwealth. It was for these reasons that I voted to support the repeal of the excise tax."
Tsongas also said she’d support legislation that would pay for the repeal by an alternative means and which would require some contributions from the larger device manufacturers that stand to benefit from healthcare reform.
"I hope that such an approach to the repeal of this tax will be considered should this bill reach the Senate," she said.
Specifically, she plans on supporting H.R. 5906, introduced by Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.), which repeals the medical device excise tax, while offsetting the $29.1 billion cost by eliminating subsidies for oil and gas companies.
Along with Tsongas, the House Democrats who supported the repeal bill included:
- Rep. Jason Altmire, (Pa.)
- Rep. John Barrow, (Ga.)
- Rep. Sanford Bishop (Ga.),
- Rep. Tim Bishop (N.Y.)
- Rep. Dan Boren, (Okla.)
- Rep. Leonard Boswell, (Iowa)
- Rep. Dennis Cardoza, (Calif.)
- Rep. Ben Chandler, (Ky.)
- Rep. Jim Costa, (Calif.)
- Rep. Mark Critz, (Pa.)
- Rep. Henry Cuellar, (Texas)
- Rep. Susan Davis (Calif.),
- Rep. Peter DeFazio, (Ore.)
- Rep. Joe Donnelly, (Ind.)
- Rep. Keith Ellison, (Minn.)
- Rep. Brian Higgins, (N.Y.)
- Rep. Kathy Hochul, (N.Y.)
- Rep. Tim Holden, (Pa.)
- Rep. William Keating, (Mass.)
- Rep. Ron Kind, (Wisc.)
- Rep. Larry Kissell, (N.C.)
- Rep. Dan Lipinski, (Ill.)
- Rep. Dave Loebsack, (Iowa)
- Rep. Jim Matheson, (Utah)
- Rep, Carolyn McCarthy, (N.Y.)
- Rep. Betty McCollum, (Minn.)
- Rep. Mike McIntyre, (N.C.)
- Rep John McNerney, (Calif.)
- Rep. Bill Owens, (N.Y.)
- Rep. Collin Peterson, (Minn.)
- Rep. Mike Ross, (AK)
- Rep. Teri Sewell, (Ala.)
- Rep. Jackie Speier, (Calif.)
- Rep. Betty Sutton, (Ohio)
- Rep. Paul Tonko, (N.Y.)