Obama’s Tax on Tampons

EDITOR’S FOOTNOTE: If you’re wondering whether the Baucus healthcare overhaul outline really does tax tampons, condoms, etc, you can check for yourself. Here’s how you can find the hidden tax on tampons by following these complicated steps:

1. Look up the section of the Baucus bill outline that places a tax on medical devices, which the bill refers to as “fees”. You can find it on page 215. Click here to find a copy of the Baucus outline.

2. This section of the bill entitled “Annual Fee on Manufacturers and Importers of Medical Devices” has the following language on what is covered under the taxes on medical devices: “covered domestic sales would include U.S. sales of medical devices regulated by the Food and Drug Administration [FDA] as a medical device [FOOTNOTE 103] and subject to premarketing and post marketing regulatory controls. The term would not include sales attributable to Class I products (as classified under the FDA product classification system)”

3. So now you have to look through the FDA web site section on medical devices, which you can do here. Then, you can conduct your own search and find out what Class of device a given medical device falls under by going to this search page. If you search “Tampon”, you will see that the FDA characterizes it as a Class II medical device and is therefore covered by the Obama tampon tax. You can also look up the following medical device terms and find out the same thing: like contact lenses and solutions, hearing aides, thermometers, oxygen bottles, wheelchairs, condoms and tampons.

4. In his press conference announcing his healthcare bill outline, Senator Baucus said this: “This is probably one of the largest pieces of social legislation in American history since the Depression. It affects everybody in our country. It affects everybody in many different ways. it is comprehensive. It is complex. It’s just takes time to fully fathom. To put the pieces together. To understand and then to make a suggestion to make it better.”

“Complex and comprehensive and affecting everybody..takes time to fully fathom …to put the pieces together.”

Baucus wasn’t kidding.

Here's the Rick Tyler Interview on Fox News Channel [Partial Transcript]

9-18-2009

FOX NEWS Host: So Rick, you just heard Peter say, This thing [the Baucus bill] is coalescing, it’s going to happen. What do you think?

RICK TYLER: Well, I think it is falling apart. I mean no one showed up at the Baucus bill. It certainly wasn’t bipartisan. There is a not a single Republican talking about supporting the bill. They’re talking about using reconciliation to force the bill through. And this bill is currently less popular than the fictitious bill that President Obama talked about in his speech.

But look, what I think people are beginning to understand is when President Obama said in the speech, “I will not pass this if it adds a single dollar to the deficit,” and what he means by that, and what he didn’t say, and what hasn’t been covered, is that when you don’t add a single dollar to the deficit to pay for this massive increase in spending, you have to increase taxes.

And those are going to be increased taxes on numerous things, which are included in the Baucus bill, by the way. And such things that are considered medical devices in class two and three, but those are things like contact lenses and solutions, hearing aides, thermometers, diabetes test strips, oxygen bottles, wheelchairs, condoms and tampons.

So, since King George put a tax on tea 236 years ago, we’ve gone from a revolt from a tax on tea to a revolt on Obama’s tax on tampons. And it is not because people are racist or have a propensity to violence, they’re just against it, and people understand that every tax is an encroachment on freedom.