Hey, Congressperson: will you tax my toothbrush?

I understand that the Senate Finance Committee is contemplating a $40 billion excise tax on medical devices and diagnostics products, to be levied upon all manufacturers of medical device and diagnostics products as defined by the Food Drug and Cosmetic Act. That would levy an excise tax on as many as 80,000 products currently sold in the US, ranging from toothbrushes to eyeglasses to condoms to stethoscopes to syringes to blood pressure monitors to hospital beds to artificial heart valves to pacemakers to advanced diagnostic equipment. Such a tax would raise almost all health-care costs and drain R&D money out of the medical device industry, impeding the development of cost-effective medical technologies. In the intense quest to finance a costly health-care reform bill, will you vote to support a perverse and counter-productive tax on medical devices?