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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sully- who wrote (78603)	3/23/2010 10:57:22 PM
From: Sully-	1 Recommendation Respond to of 90947

The Makers of the Devices that Save Our Lives By: Stephen Spruiell The Corner We spent a lot of time around here focusing on the CBO numbers and how the Democrats had gamed them to frontload revenue and push spending out of the ten-year budget window to bring the bill's total cost under a trillion dollars and make it look like a deficit-reducer. And that was important to point out, particularly since so many Blue Dogs were using the CBO numbers as cover for their votes. But it is also true that the bill raises real revenue -- in the form of confiscatory new taxes on pharmaceutical companies, medical-device manufacturers and insurance companies. In a piece that's flagged on the Web Briefing, Byron York takes a look at how one medical-device manufacturer is preparing to cope with a tax that could confiscate 100 percent of its profits, leaving it unable to attract investors. It will probably have to cut costs by reducing its R&D budget or eliminating U.S. jobs -- maybe both. "No matter what happens," Byron writes, "the makers of the devices that save our lives are going to take a major hit." Imagine if Obama had sold his plan by saying, "We're going to take a little from the R&D budget of every pharmaceutical company* and medical-device maker in the country, plus the salaries of some laid-off workers in those fields, and we're going to put that toward subsidizing the mandatory purchase of expensive health insurance for people making up to four times the federal poverty line ($88,200 for a family of four)." It would have made CBO scores seem irrelevant. Even setting aside total costs and impact on deficits, the entire premise of the bill is absurd when explained in plain language. * As you probably know, Pharma sold out and supported the bill in order to avoid some even worse plans the Democrats had in mind for them. Hey guys? Those plans are just on hold. .