Members of Congress are eager to again suspend the medical device tax, which takes effect Monday after a two-year pause.
“I'm hopeful and confident that something will happen in the near term but disappointed that it hasn't happened yet,” Rep. Jim Banks, R-3rd, said this week in a telephone interview.
“It's a tax that directly affects companies in northeast Indiana more than anywhere else in the country,” Banks said.
Warsaw calls itself the world's orthopedic capital because of its cluster of joint replacement manufacturers and suppliers. Together, implant makers Zimmer Biomet, DePuy Synthes and Medtronic employ more than 5,000 people, or roughly one of every eight workers in Kosciusko County.
Monica Kendrick, vice president of corporate communications for Zimmer Biomet, said in an email that the 2.3 percent tax on device sales “threatens to undermine industry competitiveness and patient access to life-saving and life-changing medical technologies.”
Reps. Jackie Walorski, R-2nd, and Erik Paulsen, R-Minn., recently introduced legislation that would suspend the tax for five years retroactive to Jan. 1. House Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady, R-Texas, issued a statement Dec. 12 supporting that measure and other bills aimed at relieving health care taxes, saying he would be “advancing legislation in the weeks ahead.”