On the recordJune 7, 2012
I just heard the previous speaker say that the Affordable Care Act is going to provide so much opportunity for medical device manufacturers that they will simply be able to eat this device tax. Well, that's not the case in my district, and there are three principal reasons why we must repeal this device tax: One, it increases health care costs for consumers on everything from wheelchairs, to bedpans, to prosthetics, to tongue depressors. Two, this is going to kill jobs. More than 400,000 jobs in the U.S. and 22,000 in Pennsylvania are directly employed by the medical device industry. This tax will put up to 43,000 American jobs at risk. Three, this is going to stifle innovation by reducing investment in R&D, which leads to medical breakthroughs. By the way, this is a familiar health care law trifecta: higher costs, lost jobs, lost innovation. The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentleman has expired.
