Senator Franken supported efforts to ensure that the Affordable Care Act does not add to our country's deficit, but he also agrees that the medical device industry should not bear an unfair burden of paying for health reform. Minnesota's medical device industry creates jobs and improves patients' lives, and during the health care debate Senator Franken was concerned that a tax on medical devices would stifle technological innovation. He believed there were better ways to pay for health reform, like incentivizing high-value health care, eliminating inefficient paperwork, and controlling health insurance company profits.
As a member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, Senator Franken worked for months with Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, a Democrat from Montana and Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat from Nevada, to try to reduce the proposed medical device tax, the tax was successfully cut in half, from $40 billion to $20 billion. While this was a tremendous improvement, Senator Franken will be fighting hard to continue to further reduce the unfair burden on the medical device industry.
http://www.franken.senate.gov/?p=issue&id=248
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