Posted on 03/22/2010 9:20:41 PM PDT by Free ThinkerNY
The people at Zoll Medical Corporation saw a ray of hope in January when Scott Brown was elected senator from Massachusetts. Located in Chelmsford, 30 miles outside Boston, Zoll is the nation's leading manufacturer of heart defibrillators, which save thousands of heart attack victims each year. 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."
The company's first option is to pass the increase on to customers like hospitals and ambulance companies.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonexaminer.com ...
And how many of those Zoll Medical folks voted for Hope & Change in 2008????
All of whom voted for McCain, right?
As Ross Perot would say, "That sucking sound you hear are jobs leaving the United States."
Bingo. How's that for 'change'...
Yup...it doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to see that Obamacare is going to cost us tons of jobs. Double-dip recession, here we come! WHOOOOHOOOO!!! VOMIT...
It's just a dip, and a deepening of the dip. There was no real recovery, just a dead cat bounce to the stock market and a slight lessening of the slope downwards in employment. That will pick back up now. I'm rooting for a 20% unemployment rate by Christmas.
I will probably be one of the 20%.
So how many of them voted Obama in 2008?
So that Hopey/Changey thing is working out poorly for them?
That’s....funny actually. :D
well this will certainly bring down medical cost.
We didn't expect them to vote for a RINO, did we?
Nope, they voted for the real thing...
“And how many of those Zoll Medical folks voted for Hope & Change in 2008????”
Exactly. My first thought as well. And where did their political contributins go? Hmmm?
Time to move your company out of the US.
“Time to move your company out of the US.”
I would say that it’s about half past that time.
One of my biggest what ifs in politics is what if Perot had never dropped out in July of 1992? I really think he would have won. No Clintons. Who knows what would have happened with a totally indy President. Would have been interesting.
Another what if is what if JFK Jr’s plane never went down in 1999. What if Ralph Nader never ran in 2000. What if Colin Powell did in 1996. they’re fun to contemplate.
Can they move to a red state and the AG sues to fight the tax? Texas perhaps?
[”look at trying to shift jobs to lower-cost places around the world.” That would be bad news for Massachusetts and the USA.]
Other countries have benefited benefit when an American company develops a drug or a device that saves people from life threatening disease. But we now have a president and a majority party that, whether out of spite or out of sheer ignorance, would tax innovative companies out of existence.
In this case it would be better for everyone, ourselves included, to have these operations moved elsewhere.
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