Biotech fights ObamaCare cost panel:Kerry is a target of lobbying effort

The Boston Globe reports:

Robert Coughlin faced a busy agenda recently when he landed in Washington. He and a team of Massachusetts life sciences executives attended an evening fund-raiser for Senator John F. Kerry. The next day, he pressed his case to Kerry’s staff members. Coughlin’s objective: get the Massachusetts Democrat to help torpedo a new government panel designed to reduce Medicare costs.


Coughlin, president and chief executive of the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council, is part of an army of health care industry representatives from Massachusetts and around the country who want to block creation of the Independent Payment Advisory Board, a key piece of President Obama’s health care overhaul law.

The board is designed to target wasteful and inefficient Medicare spending, and advocates say it will help rein in the federal government’s massive health care budget. But the board, which could begin work as early as 2013, is seen by industry executives as a threat to profits.

The struggles of central planning.