Posted by Tina
In 2013 a new excise tax of 2.3% on the sale of medical devices is scheduled to kick in. This is one of the many new taxes included in Obamacare. As you can imagine, the medical device industry is not happy. About 400 of them have joined together and penned a letter to Congress demanding a repeal:
“We believe that implementation of this $20 billion excise tax will adversely impact patient care and innovation, and will substantially increase the costs of health care,” the coalition wrote Monday in two identical letters to the top lawmakers in both the House and Senate. ** “If this tax is implemented in 2013, it will undermine our industry’s ability to create and maintain good jobs in the U.S., and worse, will lead to higher costs for patients, undercutting one of the primary goals of health care reform,” the trade group’s president and chief executive, Stephen J. Ubl, said in a statement Monday.
Senator Orin Hatch of Utah introduced a bill to repeal the tax in January.
This is a $91 billion industry in the U.S. All devices used by medical professionals and all devices used by the handicapped or infirm will be much more expensive because of this tax, Everything from bandaids to artificial hearts, wheelchairs to incontenance supplies will be effected. Imagine what this will mean to the millions of people on fixed limited incomes. Imagine what it will mean for doctors, dentists, hospitals and clinics in terms of their operating costs.
Obamacare is going to be very very expensive. They hoped you wouldn’t notice this tax because, as with many things in the medical realm, you won’t be taxed directly. But anyone who becomes aware of this tax who still thinks health care costs will be coming down is delusional. Unfortunately, anyone who regularly uses these products is in for a very big shock.
Repeal this tax now! Better yet…repeal Obamacare and start over. We can come up with a better bill with better solutions to the few problems facing Americans that includes language to help bring costs down.
And this is just the beginning. Hidden in the Obamacare package are a TON of new taxes. And guess who’ll be paying for it for years to come.
It’s no wonder many businesses are sitting on the sidelines until they know what the Feds are going to hit them with new and improved taxes. Were I in business today, I’d be doing the same. Anyone who thinks that Obamacare should be kept is an idiot.
The owner of a drug store called in to a radio talk show and was expressing his concern and frustration with having to comply with this new tax. He was compiling a list of all the medical related inventory in his store to program his cash register to add this tax to which would be paid for by the customer.
While many items were easy to identify he had others that were not. One of them was soap. If it was an antibacterial soap should it be added to the list or are all soaps required? He had other inventory questions, but I just remember the soap.
J and Peggy you are up to speed on the punishing outcome of this tax. Apparently there were 20 (now 19 if indeed the 1099 provision for business has been repealed) new taxes in Obamacare. You can see a list of them here:
http://www.atr.org/comprehensive-list-tax-hikes-obamacare-a5758
One of the more insidious and underhanded is this one:
If this description is accurate what this means is Obamacare has given the IRS new autonomous authority to decide when legal deductions (that means laws on the books that allow them) will be allowed and when they will not. (Not on the wealthy? Not on white folk? Not on those making more than $200-$250K a year? Not on those who work in the oil industry? Not on those who fail to donate to the “right party”? Not on those who fail to support “the right” organizations? Who?)
This is a jack boot law and if Obamacare isn’t repealed this insidious provision MUST be! (How can it possibly pass constitutional muster?)
The more we “find out what’s in the bill” the worse those who wrote it look.
Tina – The only guaranteed way Obamacare is going to be done away with is if the Republicans have a super-majority in Congress and a president in the WH. I don’t trust our supreme court.
We have some hard praying and a big job ahead of us.
Peggy you’re exactly right. The puepose of these comments and posts is to increase the political will of the people to make it happen…and prayer, as you suggest, is always the best place to begin.