Elizabeth Warren says part of Obamacare should be repealed

Republican Sen. Scott Brown has managed to keep the U.S. Senate race in the deep-blue state of Massachusetts close.  Opposition to the president's proposed health care reform was a major factor in Brown's upset win for Teddy Kennedy's Senate seat in a January 2010 special election, and the liberal icon challenging Brown in 2012 appears to have taken note. In an op-ed Tuesday for MassDevice.com, an online journal of the medical devices industry, Democratic Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren said she would be willing to repeal part of President Obama’s healthcare law:

"When Congress taxes the sale of a specific product through an excise tax, as the Affordable Care Act does with medical devices, it too often disproportionately impacts the small companies with the narrowest financial margins and the broadest innovative potential. It also pushes companies of all sizes to cut back on research and development for life-saving products. With an appropriate offset, we can repeal the medical device tax without cutting health care coverage for millions of people or forcing Americans to fight the whole health care battle all over again."

The Harvard Law professor and key White House aide during the creation of the president's Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, who has since taken credit for the "intellectual foundation" of the Occupy Wall Street movement, joins fellow liberal Massachusetts Democrat and hopeful colleague Sen. John Kerry in voicing opposition to the tax on the medical device-industry, which plays a major part in the Bay State's economy. 

The Hill notes that the 2.3 percent tax on device companies is expected to raise about $20 billion over 10 years. The medical device tax has been ranked as one of the 10 most expensive taxes and fees of Obamacare by the Heritage Foundation.