Medical Company Smith & Nephew Lays Off Almost 100 People, Blames Obamacare

Medical Company Blames Obamacare For Layoffs
FILE - In this Sept. 4, 2012 file photo, President Barack Obama speaks in Norfolk, Va. The U.S. health care system squanders $750 billion a year roughly 30 cents of every medical dollar through unneeded care, Byzantine paperwork, fraud and other waste, the influential Institute of Medicine said Thursday in a report that ties directly into the presidential campaign. President Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney are accusing each other of trying to slash Medicare and put seniors at risk. But the counter-intuitive finding from the report is that deep cuts are possible without rationing, and a leaner system may even produce better quality. ( AP Photo/Steve Helber, File)
FILE - In this Sept. 4, 2012 file photo, President Barack Obama speaks in Norfolk, Va. The U.S. health care system squanders $750 billion a year roughly 30 cents of every medical dollar through unneeded care, Byzantine paperwork, fraud and other waste, the influential Institute of Medicine said Thursday in a report that ties directly into the presidential campaign. President Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney are accusing each other of trying to slash Medicare and put seniors at risk. But the counter-intuitive finding from the report is that deep cuts are possible without rationing, and a leaner system may even produce better quality. ( AP Photo/Steve Helber, File)

Another company is blaming Obamacare for layoffs.

Medical technology company, Smith & Nephew, announced Thursday that it would be letting go of almost 100 workers at its plants in Tennessee and Massachusetts. The company, which makes orthopedic reconstruction products, is blaming 2.3 percent excise tax on medical devices in President Obama's health care law for the layoffs, according to Fox13 News.

“The nearly $30 billion tax on medical devices that took effect Jan. 1, 2013, has impacted a number of companies across the U.S.,” the company said in a statement to Fox13 News.

Medical companies lobbied to get the tax, which is levied on medical devices implanted by professionals, repealed, according to Reuters. The tax is expected to raise $29 billion in government revenue through 2022.

Joe Metzger, the company's senior vice president of corporate communications, told the Memphis Business Journal that the firm is "not immune from this added expense burden."

Smith & Nephew, which is based in London and has a global reach, employs "more than 11,000 [people] in 90 countries," according to the Washington Times.

The company is not the first to blame Obamacare for layoffs and other cuts in spending.

In November, The Huffington Post reported that a Georgia man who identified himself as a small business owner said "he fired some employees and cut hours for others" because of the president's reelection and his "Obamacare mandate."

Also in November, Fox News reported that Stryker, a global manufacturer of medical devices and equipment, had announced that it was cutting 1,170 jobs in anticipation of the health care law and the medical device excise tax.

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