The GOP disarms three more financial time bombs about to blow up your personal budget.
Lost in all the sound and fury that accompanied the recent shutdown of the federal government was some good news for Americans facing ever increasing health care costs. Part of the price paid by the Democrats to get out of the hole they dug for themselves when they forced the shutdown was the suspension of three onerous Obamacare taxes — the medical device tax, the tax on premium (Cadillac) health plans, and the health insurance (HIT) tax. All three were wildly unpopular with the voters, due to go into effect imminently, and would have made medical care even more expensive.
The 2.3 percent tax on medical devices, which went into effect on January 1, has long been billed by Obamacare advocates as a corporate tax. Like all taxes levied on corporations, however, it would have inevitably been passed on to the customer. And the customers affected by this particular excise tax are Americans who must have crucial medical devices such as pacemakers and artificial joints. Also impacted are the hospitals to which patients go to receive advanced tests involving MRIs, CT scans, ultrasounds, and X-rays. The cost of these tests would inevitably be increased by this tax.
Moreover, the medical device tax is a natural born job killer. This is not a matter of idle speculation. This excise tax has already been implemented and suspended once. It originally went into effect January 1, 2013, pursuant to the provisions of the “Affordable Care Act,” and bedeviled the medical device industry until Congress decided to suspend it at the end of 2015. During the two years the tax remained in effect, the manufacturers were frequently forced to choose between R & D and eliminating jobs. As Stephen L. Ferguson, the chairman of Cook Medical, wrote at the time:
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