OFFICIALS LEGISLATION INTEREST GROUPS PUBLIC STATEMENTS COMMITTEES VETOES

Health Care Costs Reduction Act of 2012

Floor Speech

Date: June 7, 2012
Location: Washington, DC
Issues: Senior Citizens Health and Health Care

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. THOMPSON of California. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker and Members, I rise today in opposition to this bill. And this is not a tax that I like. As a matter of fact, I don't like this tax at all.

The medical device industry has been on the forefront of creating jobs, pushing medical innovation, and keeping all of us healthier. But we didn't pass this provision in a vacuum, and today we're not voting to repeal it in a vacuum. We didn't pass it to be vindictive or mean or because we just felt like it.

This provision was passed as part of a larger bill that was a response to a national crisis in health care that we're experiencing in our country. In order to do this, we had to make some really hard choices so our grandkids and our great grandkids weren't stuck with the bill for this response, like they were for the drug benefits for seniors or the tax cuts their grandparents enjoyed.

This wasn't done lightly, and the device industry isn't alone in sharing in some of this responsibility. But the device industry will also see the benefits of having 30 million additional people covered by health care. Many of those will be customers of the device industry.

I'd vote to repeal this provision today, yesterday, or tomorrow if we were having a serious discussion about the provision with a serious pay-for. Instead, we're repealing a tax on an industry that had over $40 billion in profits in 2010, and we're paying for it on the backs of middle class people, some of whom, for the first time in their adult lives, will have access to quality, affordable health care.

Now, this is probably the tenth time in this Congress that we've repealed, or we will vote to repeal, part of the Affordable Care Act. In addition to that, we've also voted to repeal the entire act.

This is not honest debate on policy but, rather, another political cheap shot at the Affordable Care Act. For these reasons, I urge a ``no'' vote on this legislation.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT


Source
arrow_upward