Erik Paulsen: “I thank the gentleman for sharing the personal perspective of how medical innovation has helped his family members…”

“I thank the gentleman for sharing the personal perspective of how medical innovation has helped his family members literally save lives, improve lives. Thousands and thousands and thousands of Americans have a friend or a family member that can share that exact same story. That is uniquely American, in many ways. And now we are exporting these devices around the world to make health care better. Again, improve lives, saving lives. Where did the medical device tax come from? That's what a lot of my constituents ask. Why in the world would we tax medical innovation, have a tax on innovation? When the health care law was being debated a few years ago, we needed to find revenue. Let's just do a $40 billion tax on the medical device industry. They backed into the number 2.3 percent. We won't make it $40 billion. We'll make it $20 billion. Well, guess what, Mr. Speaker. It ended up being about $30 billion now. Despite all of our best efforts now, and bipartisan support on this floor, this tax is in effect. It is being collected. The first payments began being collected in January. Every 2 weeks they get collected--the same amount of time, by the way, that companies give payroll every 2 weeks. So what do company owners have to make the decision to do? Are they going to hire more workers? And they also look at the tax. And the bottom line is they're having to pay that tax every 2 weeks. So close to $2 billion, Mr. Speaker, has already been collected.…”