Obama Care's Broken Promises

Floor Speech

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Mr. YOUNG of Indiana. I thank the gentlelady, my hardworking colleague from Tennessee, who is also a health care professional and quite conversant on these issues. You speak with some authority. So thank you very much.

I come from the State of Indiana with internationally renowned medical device manufacturers, manufacturers like Cook Group in Bloomington, or smaller entrepreneurial companies like MedVenture in Jeffersonville. Indiana, in fact, is a global leader in the medical device industry. Scores of successful medical device businesses are headquartered in the Hoosier State, and they provide nearly 20,000 hardworking Hoosiers with good-paying jobs. Now, these jobs, by the way, provide wages that are over 40 percent higher than the State average. These are exactly the sort of businesses we need to expand and grow right here in America if we want to create a healthy economy.

I bring this up because the President's health care law--what most Americans now know as ObamaCare--would shrink the number of American jobs in the medical device industry. This is because the law contains a 2.3 percent industry-specific excise tax that will cripple the sale of these medical devices. It would cripple the entire sector and hurt American jobs.

Now, back in October, a bipartisan group of us from Indiana held a field hearing in Indianapolis to discuss this very issue with industry leaders. The response from businesses was unanimous: this device tax would be, across the board, harmful to these manufacturers throughout the industry. Many admitted that they would have to move jobs to Europe. Now, when is the last time that we heard it was cheaper to move American jobs to Europe?

For the sake of keeping these high-paying, advanced manufacturing jobs here in the United States, this tax must be repealed. In fact, the medical device excise tax is so harmful to the American economy that the House voted just 2 weeks ago to repeal this narrow part of ObamaCare. It's one in a long string of votes that we've cast in this House to repeal or replace a portion of this law.

Now, there's a better way to address increasing health care costs than by imposing additional taxes on the American people. I say, let's start over. If the Supreme Court doesn't do our work for us, let's repeal the Affordable Care Act. Then, let's get to work and pass bipartisan legislation that would actually bring down the cost of health care--what this whole exercise was supposed to be about in the beginning. Our constituents deserve no less. They expect us to engage in this effort. I'm certainly committed to it, and I know my colleagues here on the Republican side in the House are committed to it as well.

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