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USA Today: Medical Device Makers Say New Obamacare Tax Will "Send Jobs Overseas" | Missouri Political News Service

USA Today: Medical Device Makers Say New Obamacare Tax Will “Send Jobs Overseas”

September 24th, 2012 by mopns · No Comments

USA Today reports, “Even as the new health care law adds millions of insured customers to the paying pool, medical device manufacturers say a tax on their product could cost them billions. The tax came as the government looked for ways to fund the new law. . . . [T]he government looked to higher-earning citizens — those who make more than $200,000 a year — to also contribute. In industry, the government focused on the $130 billion-a-year medical device manufacturing industry.”

“But,” USA Today writes, “the manufacturers say the tax will force money away from research, send jobs overseas and stop them from expanding in the U.S. . . . Medical device manufacturing includes everything from tongue depressors to hip replacements to heart stents. . . . Steve Ubl, CEO of AdvaMed, the trade organization that represents the industry, said the tax would force companies to cut 43,000 jobs and will cost the industry $30 billion in the next 10 years. ‘It’s very concerning to us,’ he said. ‘It’s a tax on revenue, and it translates to a very deep cut in the bottom line.’ Ubl said the companies won’t look for more efficient products, contrary to what advocates of the law say. Instead, they’ll cut jobs and reduce investment in research and development. Or, he said, they’ll pass the tax on to their customers.

“Steve Ferguson, chairman of Cook Group, said the tax has caused the company to stop plans on a $15 million factory that would employ 300 people — and that four more planned after that have also been stopped. The company would be paying more than 50% in taxes, he said, and it would push innovation to ‘foreign shores.’”

The problems with the medical device tax in Democrat’s unpopular health care law was something Republicans warned about from the very beginning and many reports warned of when the bill passed.

Today’s new warning about one of the taxes in the health care law comes on the heels of a report last week about another one aimed squarely at the middle class. As the AP put it, “Nearly 6 million Americans – significantly more than first estimated- will face a tax penalty under President Barack Obama’s health overhaul for not getting insurance, congressional analysts said Wednesday. Most would be in the middle class.”

The taxes in Obamacare, some of which could cost tens of thousands of jobs and others that will fall on middle class Americans, are just more reasons for this bad legislation to be repealed and replaced.

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