What do we need? Jobs. What are we getting? ObamaCare.
Byron York explains the problem for the Washington Examiner.
Back in January, as the Senate race was raging, both House and Senate
Democrats wanted to impose a crippling new tax on the makers of medical
devices, Zoll included, to help pay for Obamacare.The total tax on the industry would be about $2 billion a year, or
$20 billion over the next decade. Companies watched nervously as
lawmakers pushed ahead, first the House and then the Senate. But then
Brown was elected on the promise to be the crucial Republican vote to
stop health care reform. For Zoll, things were looking up.Not anymore. The bill passed by the House Sunday night contains a
particularly damaging version of the $20 billion hit for the medical
device industry, meaning Zoll and other medical device makers could well
be headed for hard times.“We believe that the tax will cost us somewhere between $5 million
and $10 million a year,” says Richard Packer, Zoll’s chairman and chief
executive officer. “Our profit in 2009 was $9.5 million.”That would be a devastating blow. Zoll employs about 1,800 people.
Roughly 1,600 of them are in the United States, and about 650 of those
are in Massachusetts. Once the new tax kicks in, that could all change.
“We can’t run this company at a break-even or a negative rate,” says
Packer, “so we will be forced to look at alternatives.”
