By Reps. Erik Paulsen and Jim Gerlach

At a time when our greatest priority needs to be creating jobs for our unemployed citizens, the government is on the verge of implementing a new medical device excise tax that will eliminate more than 40,000 well-paying jobs and imperil America’s global competitiveness in one of our leading industrial and technological sectors.

When asked earlier this year in a House committee hearing about the new tax on medical devices that will take effect in 2013, the secretary of Health and Human Services called the $20 billion tax “modest” and said, essentially, that it was so inconsequential that it would barely be noticed.

Now, we have verification of the damage this measure will do. A new study by two noted economists — one who was a former chief economist of the Labor Department and the other who was previously the chief economist of the House Energy and Commerce Committee — has found that, under reasonable assumptions, the medical device excise tax will result in 43,000 lost jobs and $3.5 billion in vanished wages and benefits. That’s a tremendous blow to a reeling economy.

This may be the most anti-innovation piece of legislation to come along in some time. The tax hits well-established companies and startup businesses that are suffering losses in their initial years while they invest heavily in the research and development of their first innovation for patients.

Thanks to this tax, companies could be forced to close factories in this country and look overseas where foreign governments are extremely eager to jump-start their high-tech sectors.

In worst-case scenarios, those potentially lifesaving and life-changing medical devices might never find their way to hospital beds and operating rooms.

The new device tax hits Americans in two extremely painful ways.

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