What expenses does it offset, CBJ7? And how many jobs have to be lost before the tax is considered a bad idea? Originally Posted by CuteOldGuy
In total, the news stories pinned at least 1,300 job losses inside the U.S., though most companies did not specify where the cuts would fall.
The U.S. medical devices industry, said a July 24, 2013, Forbes news story, "employs 400,000 Americans directly and is indirectly responsible for almost 2 million more that supply and support the highly-skilled workforce."
The GOP web post pointed to a 2011 study financed by the Advanced Medical Technology Association, or AdvaMed. It said that the excise tax would cause 10 percent of device manufacturing to move offshore, leading to the loss of 43,000 U.S. jobs.
PolitiFact Ohio wrote in a 2012 fact-check that analysis by the research service Bloomberg Government found the AdvaMed study was "not credible."
The publisher of an online journal covering the medical device industry, Brian Johnson of MassDevice.com, told Boston public radio station WBUR in a Sept. 30, 2013, interview, that "the tax is costing the industry thousands of jobs."
"In 2012, publicly traded medical device companies cut 10,000 jobs, in part, to brace for the impact of the tax, although it’s impossible to determine how much the tax actually added to those job loss numbers."
By phone, Johnson told us, "The long and the short of it is that it's nearly impossible to determine if the tax alone was the cause of layoffs, or if the company used the tax as a good cover for layoffs that were going to happen to begin with. The medical device industry is facing some pretty substantial headwinds that have nothing to do with the excise tax," such as the high costs associated with negotiating and completing sales of such devices.
Cutting to the bottom line, the Boston radio station asked Johnson, "So, is this really worth shutting the federal government down over? Don’t these guys make billions of dollars a year? Why can’t they just pass that 2.3 percent on to their customers?"
Johnson said hospital purchasing groups have united in a campaign that "has been effective in keeping most medical device companies from trying to pass the buck," and said that because the tax is on all sales, "even companies that are losing money have to pay it. This means the tax disproportionately harms young, innovative start-up companies."
Also, he said, the industry is skeptical of predictions that business will boom as more people join the health-care system. "Medical device makers argue that the new enrollees in health insurance plans will be young and not in need of the technology they create, such as cardiac stents, hip and knee implants and surgical devices," he said.
Our ruling
Poe said "the costly medical device tax" in the Obamacare law "has led to the loss of thousands of jobs across the nation."
News stories indicate more than 2,000 such cuts were planned or made partly because of the tax. An industry analyst has said that "the tax is costing the industry thousands of jobs," but also told us that "it's nearly impossible to determine if the tax alone was the cause of layoffs."
Poe’s claim is partly accurate but leaves out this important context. We rate it Half True.
HALF TRUE – The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context.
apparently the rest of the stupid fuckers on this thread cant read, so FUCK THEM !
