How Obama/Biden Wrecked the U.S. Medical Device Industry

Daniel John Sobieski

"As lawmakers ponder ways to bring back U.S. manufacturing of pharmaceuticals, their raw materials, medical supplies, and devices, it must be remembered a major part of this problem which has come back to bite us was created by the Obama/Biden administration and the medical device tax that was included in ObamaCare that was supposed to defray the costs of this doomed-to-failure new entitlement program.

"As part of the Orwellian-named Affordable Care Act, sales of medical devices from implants to MRIs, research equipment and surgical instruments were to bear a 2.3 percent tax. The tax would be on gross sales and not just profits. Even packaging, shipping, and warranties were included when calculating what was to be taxed.

"Because the Affordable Care Act was so unaffordable, it needed a running head start on revenue with imposition of the new tax beginning on January 1, 2013, while ObamaCare itself would begin a rolling implementation in 2014 with its more harmful aspects and the revelations that, no, you couldn’t keep your doctor or your plan even if you liked them. We would have to wait to find out that premiums would skyrocket, not decrease $2,500 as promised in another Obama/Biden lie, and deductibles would be so high that many of those with insurance couldn’t use it. Taxes first, questions later." . . .

. . . "As Rush Limbaugh has noted, liberal progressives like Obama and Biden employ a static analysis that says you can raise taxes and human and corporate behavior won’t change:

Do you all remember this thing called Obamacare? I’m sure you do. Do you remember the medical device tax that Obamacare instituted? Like all liberals, Obama believed that people that make things will pay anything. You put a tax on ’em, they’ll just keep paying the tax and they’ll just keep making the device. You put a tax on yachts, and people will pay the tax…Well, guess what? The people that manufacture medical devices fled the USA, and they went overseas to various places to get ’em made. One of the places they went was China. They also went to Mexico. They went to places in Europe. And now people complain about a shortage. They want to chalk it up to somehow a fault or a deficiency of capitalism or of the United States. No siree, Bob. It was a by-product of a tax increase called Obamacare on medical devices.

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