Obama the Job Killer in Chief:
Indiana company scraps plans for expansion over ObamaCare device tax
By Judson Berger
Published July 27, 2012
FoxNews.comAn Indiana-based medical equipment manufacturer says it’s scrapping plans to open five new plants in the coming years because of a looming tax tied to President Obama’s health care overhaul law.
Cook Medical claims the tax on medical devices, set to take effect next year, will cost the company roughly $20 million a year, cutting into money that would otherwise go toward expanding into new facilities over the next five years.
“This is the equivalent of about a plant a year that we’re not going to be able to build,” a company spokesman told FoxNews.com.
He said the original plan was to build factories in “hard-pressed” Midwestern communities, each employing up to 300 people. But those factories cost roughly the same amount as the projected cost of the new tax.
“In reality, we’re not looking at the U.S. to build factories anymore as long as this tax is in place. We can’t, to be competitive,” he said.
Company executive Pete Yonkman first revealed the scuttled plans in an interview with the Indianapolis Business Journal
. The company later confirmed the decision to FoxNews.com.
The Affordable Care Act imposed a 2.3 percent tax on medical devices beginning in 2013. It is projected raise nearly $30 billion over the next decade.
But the Cook Medical spokesman said the impact is greater than just a 2.3 percent uptick in taxes. He said the impact on actual earnings is another 15 percent, and he projected the company’s total tax burden next year will rise to over 50 percent.
Republicans and medical device makers have been railing against the tax all along, with the GOP-controlled House approving a bill last month to repeal it. The Senate, though, hasn’t taken it up.
A recent study by the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, though, said the complaints by the industry are exaggerated.
“The tax will not cause manufacturers to shift production overseas. The tax applies equally to imported and domestically produced devices, and devices produced in the United States for export are tax-exempt,” the study said. It also said repealing the tax would “undercut health reform” by requiring Congress to offset the repeal by potentially killing spending provisions in the law and by potentially encouraging similar repeals.
Cook Medical is part of a family of companies that produce medical devices for surgery, obstetrics, gynecology and other fields.
The left can make all the bogus assertions with all the pseudo facts they want. But what they can’t do is give us back the 1,500 jobs that ObamaCare just took away from just one company.
I guess Democrats can reassure themselves that these aborted jobs are like aborted babies. The aborted babies – at least most of them given the Nazi-like infanticide that Obama favors (see more here) in which already-born babies are murdered if momma wanted them dead – are like the aborted jobs: neither ever survived Democrats’ depraved policies.
Tags: Cook Medical, medical equipment manufacturer, Obamacare, plans to open five new plants, tax on medical devices
Start Thinking Right 
August 3, 2012 at 5:05 pm
I know a woman who works in the medical device field mainly as a rep. When the Supreme Court upheld Obamacare, I asked her what kind of effect would that have on her industry. She ignorantly replied that it would benefit her and her industry well because more people would be insured and able to get medical treatment. I kind of chuckled and gave her my take by telling her that Obamacare in general would devastate the entire medical industry, including hers. That there are alot of taxes in that piece of shit bill, including some directed directly toward her industry. Not only that, but she makes over 250K, mostly for doing nothing, and will most likely feel the effects of Obama’s tax hikes on the “rich.”
About a week ago, she was due to get a large bonus. The company she works for told her and other employees that there would be no bonuses this time. She was very upset and counting on it. When she told me about it, I told her that this has everything to do with Obamacare and that she has no idea what it will do to this country if it isn’t repealed. Now, this woman I am speaking of is politically ignorant and, in my opinion, short on common sense. I ended the conversation by telling her that what ever she does, do not vote for Obama, not under any circumstances. I hope what I said, by connecting the dots between her loss of income and Obama, that at least I’ve potentially swayed one from the dark side! Imagine if all conservatives each could sway just one person.
August 3, 2012 at 5:17 pm
Free Market Capitalist,
Great story.
The problem is that you cannot “connect the dots” for a moral idiot.
Moral idiots are by their very nature either wicked people or fools. And the Bible states quite categorically that both come to the same end.
Interestingly, nearly ALL of the doctors, nurses and medical technicians I have talked to – in Palm Springs of all places – were the ones who were every bit as angry about ObamaCare as I have been. And as you know, I have been stark raving PISSED about ObamaCare.