Obamacare: Stryker announces layoffs due to healthcare reform
Stryker is a company that manufactures artificial hips and knees and today they announced today the company will be laying off 5% of its workforce:
These actions are part of our ongoing focus on quality, innovation and cost, and position the company to continue to provide strong, consistent growth in a changing environment
What does the CEO of Stryker mean when he talks about a “changing environment” in the medical devices field? Obamacare of course:
Stryker, the Kalamazoo-based maker of artificial hips and knees, will cut 5% of its global workforce by the end of next year to reduce costs in the face of new fees on device makers required by the U.S. health care law
Obamacare raises taxes in order to pay for itself and one of those taxes is a tax on medical devices–including artificial hips and knees. A tax increase on a business is nothing more than a cost increase and companies make up for that increase in the cost of doing business in two ways; they raise the price of the product and they cut workforce. In both cases the people that are most hurt by tax increases on “big business” are the people who can least afford to take the hit–the middle to lower classes–not the companies themselves.
The only way healthcare costs will come down for the people who may need a new hip or a new knee is to send them home with a pain pill to cope with their struggle instead of the new hip or knee they actually need, and this sounds an awful lot like rationing to me.
When Barack Obama sold this bill of goods to the American people he promised that this legislation would help to reduce the cost of healthcare and would actually create jobs, but as we can see in this example Obamacare is actually going to raise the price of certain healthcare expenditures as well as cost people their jobs. Exactly the opposite of what Barack Obama claimed would happen.
And this is only the beginning; most of the healthcare law hasn’t even been implemented at this time. This is as good as it is going to get, it is only going to get worse from here.
America's Watchtower 
Centralized planning of markets is a fools errand and we have plenty of those in this administration.
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And they aremoving full speed ahead!
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You know, I always thought that when you got up to the “senior citizen” stage of life that you had paid your dues and would be able to relax a bit. Now they keep moving retirement age and with the uncertainty of the medical coverage, the seniors are going to be in trouble. I know alot of friends in their 50’s that have already had knee/hip replacements. Luckily, I am not among them, but will it even be there if we need it? Are we looking at getting things done ahead of time, just because it might not be available later on? This whole Obamacare stinks. I know there are people that think it will be free! For who? Only the ones that are on the dole now. Anyone able to pay for it WILL pay or be fined. How were “we” so gullible to think that it would be for the good of the nation? The ones needing to be on welfare/medicare/medicaid/SSI were already covered, weren’t they? How much more money do they want from us? We in Illinois already had a 65% tax increase this year and I have heard next year it will go up another 45-50%. Our Governor is pricing us right out of living here, besides it being a crooked state. BUT, we sure can cover all the people that need that welfare check or the SSI check, along with their free cell phones, power subsidy, rent subsidy, medical coverage, free schooling and lunches and babysitting, well, we can’t cut any of that. I am sick of paying for big screen tv’s, gold teeth and newer cars than I drive. Where does it end?
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It certainly is frustrating to work so hard only to be used by the government to support those who are not working. We are the ones who are constantly getting the shaft for our hard work and it make me wonder sometimes who are the smart ones here?
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These son-of-a-bitches are so full of crap. The bottom line is their God at the expense of our wounded, and Obama is their prophet. I would like to put his skinny ass under fire – my guess there isn’t enough toilet paper in the world to clean his drawers.
In my opinion Obama is nothing but a pampered punk and all those who would sacrifice quality medical care for those who have sacrificed so much are scum of the earth. They are just as bad as this clown president….WM
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And this is only the beginning, it is only going to get worse as the government looks to cut costs down the road.
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Run by Republicans? How else did they not get a waiver?
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Now that is a possibility, could Stryker be the Gibson of healthcare?
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Good point, Harrison. What else could it be, but that? Waivers get handed out “freely” to certain people/businesses, don’t they?
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Hundreds of companies have waivers… I wonder…
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32 years in the health care business and I still wonder how this bill passed. Hopefully the Supreme Court will come to the rescue.
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MMI, it seems that it is “easy” to find votes when you have information that might surface IF you don’t vote a certain way. Guess there is a possibility there are alot of skeletons in the closets of Congress?
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It’s because of the Medical device excise tax.
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And this is only the first of many such stories we are going to read about in the future as this bill goes into effect.
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Steve,
I work in the medical device industry which is how I ended up here. I’m commenting because I figure anybody who puts Federalist Paper #10 deserves a shout. I’ve been reading the Federalist, John Locke and the DOI etc for a long time now and just as happy as I could be to see sights like your popping up every where. I guess you could say I was Tea Party before the Tea Party. Anyway I wanted to know your work was appreciated. Keep doing what you’re doing man, it’s worth the effort.
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