The Drosophila melanogaster Genetic Reference Panel
Mackay, Richards et al., Nature
North Carolina State University's Trudy Mackay and her colleagues present the Drosophila melanogaster Genetic Reference Panel, "a community resource for analysis of population genomics and quantitative traits."
Baucus Kills $750M Clinical Lab Tax Provision
September 22, 2009
Sen. Max Baucus has ended his quest to levy a new $750 million annual performance tax on clinical labs, according to a new mark of the bill.
However, a separate provision in his Senate bill would cut the Medicare lab fee schedule by 1.75 percentage points from 2011 through 2015, according to G-2 Reports.
Shares in LabCorp and Quest surged on the news. LabCorp stock was up 3.67 percent at 65.69 in late-afternoon trading, while Quest shares were up 3.77 percent at $53.43.
Baucus is chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, which has been drafting the chamber’s version of a health-care reform package sought by the Obama Administration. Baucus’ decision to remove the new fees comes two weeks after they appeared as part of a draft proposal to pay for the plan, which would cost around $900 billion.
The proposed tax was seen as a blow to clinical labs in the US. Today, during a presentation at UBS’ annual life-science conference in New York, LabCorp CEO David King called the tax “draconian,” “enormously outsized,” and “confiscatory.”
Yesterday, members of the finance committee began a swift campaign to introduce amendments that would rid Baucus’ plan of the new fees.