GOP: Tax on breast reconstruction?
Written by admin on November 19, 2009
From NBC’s Kelly O’Donnell and Domenico Montanaro
In the Reid healthcare bill, in that place is a newly come 5% tax on elective cosmetic surgery.
Today, Oklahoma Republican Sen. Tom Coburn, who is a medical man and staunchly opposed to this legislation, suggested on the Senate floor that a woman would be taxed forward the supposition that she had breast renovation surgery following cancer.
“In this bill is a 5% tax forward cosmetic surgery,” Coburn said. “Just yesterday — the day before yesterday, U.S. preventive task forces, services, recommended because it’s not cost effective that women under 50 not get mammograms unless they have risk factors. Well, you make report that to the thousands of women who were diagnosed with breast cancer lat last — remain year under 50 with a mammogram. You tell them it’s not cost effective. Also in this bill is a 5% put a task upon attached the breast rebuilding surgery after they had a mastectomy. They’re going to tax having your breast rebuilt posterior your breast is taken off because it is elective plastic surgery. It is elective cosmetic surgery. We’re going to have a tax on it because we’ve taxed elective cosmetic surgery. We’re in trouble as a nation because we’ve taken our eye not upon the ball.”
First, the task force’s recommendation on mammograms wasn’face to face undivided based on require to be paid — it was based on science and research.
Second, is Coburn correct steady his point about the bill? The text of the bill defines elective cosmetic surgery parallel this: “not necessary to raise a deformity arising from, or directly related to, a congenital abnormality, a personal injury resulting from an accident or trauma, or disfiguring disease.”
Is cancer resulting in a mastectomy be considered a “disfiguring disease?”