I have a column up now at USA Today online about how the medical device tax in ObamaCare will hurt countless patients and also kill lots and lots of jobs in swing states.
The president’s health law imposes a 2.3% tax on all medical device sales. This doesn’t sound like much, but that’s misleading. The tax is not on profits, but on gross (total) receipts. For smaller device manufacturers with narrow profit margins, the tax could actually exceedtheir profits, pushing them into the red. Such is the case with companies known as ConMed (with possible job losses in swing states Colorado and Florida), Symmetry Medical (job centers in swing states Michigan and New Hampshire), and ultrasound pioneer Sinosite.
Some medical-device makers, such as Stryker (headquarters: Kalamazoo, Michigan) and Zimmer Holdings (job locations in Nevada, Minnesota, Ohio, and Pennsylvania), already have announced layoffs (1,000 and 450, respectively) as a result of the tax.
There’s lots more in the column. Read the whole thing, please. My question, even apart from the job losses, is how Obama can be considered compassionate when he is taxing such desperately needed items as catheters, pacemakers, insulin pumps, asthma inhalers, artificial hips, prosthetic limbs, chemotherapy ports, and thousands of other life-saving or hugely life-improving products.
