WASHINGTON — The era of crisis budgeting in Washington has opened new opportunities for corporations and special interests.
The latest example of a last-minute favor came in the “fiscal cliff” bill signed into law on Jan. 3 to avert across-the-board tax increases and to delay spending cuts known as the sequester. The bill, crafted on deadline, was stuffed with special provisions helping specific companies and industries. Many of these provisions were included to help offset the sequester delay and to extend the “doc fix,” a delay of physicians’ Medicare payment cuts that Congress has been extending on an ad hoc basis since 2002.
One that stands out is a reduction in the Medicare reimbursement rate for a radiosurgery device manufactured by the Swedish company Elekta AB. The cut is noteworthy because it was advocated by Palo Alto, Calif.-based Varian Medical Systems Inc., Elekta’s main competitor. The rate cut, according to the first report by The Wall Street Journal, was included in the fiscal cliff deal at the behest of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and written into the bill by the Senate Finance Committee chairman, Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.).
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