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Billionaire Hansjörg Wyss, a Swiss national who lives in Wyoming, has become a “Democrat-aligned mega-donor,” according to the Associated Press (AP), thanks to his funneling hundreds of millions of dollars to left-wing groups. “Newly available tax documents show that his giving through the Berger Action Fund, which describes itself as advocating for ‘solutions to some of our world’s biggest problems,’ swelled in 2021 to $72 million, cementing Wyss’ status as a Democratic-aligned megadonor,” the AP reports. Wyss, who built his fortune creating the medical device company Synthes USA, which was sold in 2012 to Johnson & Johnson for $20 billion,...

PORTLAND, Ore., Feb. 26, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Otoharmonics Corporation, a U.S. veteran-owned company offering sound therapy for tinnitus management, has been awarded a five-year Federal Supply Schedule Medical Equipment and Supply contract, making Levo available immediately to patients receiving care within the Department of Veterans Affairs, Department of Defense, Bureau of Prisons, Indian Heads Services, and Public Health Services. Compatible with the Clinical Practice Guidelines for Tinnitus published by the American Academy of Otolaryngologists and the VA's Progressive Tinnitus Management Program, the Levo System's sleep therapy has been shown to reduce the level of tinnitus intensity and improve the quality...

After working at Theranos Inc. for eight months, Tyler Shultz decided he had seen enough. On April 11, 2014, he emailed company founder Elizabeth Holmes to complain that Theranos had doctored research and ignored failed quality-control checks. The reply was withering. Ms. Holmes forwarded the email to Theranos President Sunny Balwani, who belittled Mr. Shultz’s grasp of basic mathematics and his knowledge of laboratory science, and then took a swipe at his relationship with George Shultz, the former secretary of state and a Theranos director. “The only reason I have taken so much time away from work to address this...

Embattled Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes is a victim who has been "totally attacked," venture capitalist Tim Draper told CNBC on Tuesday. Holmes has been under fire since a series of reports by The Wall Street Journal suggested the blood-testing start-up's testing devices were flawed. "Elizabeth Holmes is a great example of maybe why the women are so frustrated. She is a woman entrepreneur who built a fabulous company, did great things for consumers and she got attacked," the founding partner of Draper Associates and Draper Fisher Jurvetson said in an interview with "Closing Bell." "This is a great entrepreneur who...

Theranos Inc. allegedly voided 11.3% of all blood-test reports that the Silicon Valley laboratory firm provided to customers of Walgreens stores through a yearslong partnership between the two companies, according to legal papers the drugstore chain filed Tuesday. Theranos, whose main lab failed an inspection by U.S. regulators earlier this year, told Walgreens in June that it subsequently voided 31,000 test reports provided to the chain’s customers, Walgreens said in the public version of a sealed lawsuit.

SAN FRANCISCO – Walgreens has filed a $140 million breach of contract suit against Theranos Inc., compounding the woes of the Silicon Valley-based medical device startup. The suit was filed under seal in Delaware federal court on Tuesday. It's not clear what exactly the Illinois-headquartered pharmacy chain is alleging, but the docket describes the case as a breach of contract suit with a demand of $140 million.

But it's "only" 2.3%! How can such a tiny tax have such a large negative impact? That's the thinking of the excise tax supporters who think that the medical device industry can "easily afford" the tax (New York Times) and besides, they deserve it because they're "anti-competitive": A new survey says Obamacare's tax on medical device manufacturers has cost the industry about 33,000 jobs.In a report this week, the Advanced Medical Technology Association (AdvaMed) said companies cut about 14,000 workers and decided not to hire about 19,000 workers because of theThe report also said the 2.3 percent excise tax also...

As I mentioned yesterday, the medical device tax that went into effect last January is just one of the many insidious job-killing measures contained within ObamaCare, but it is an especially terrible one. The 2.3 percent excise tax is meant to raise a handsome $30 billion to pay for ObamaCare over the next decade, except that, added bonus: It’s going to stifle innovation and competition in an industry that provides all manner of life-saving medical devices, from MRIs to pacemakers to blood tubes.And this hasn’t just been a Republican refrain, by the way. Thursday night, the Senate voted overwhelmingly to...

In a letter to Majority Leader Harry Reid, 18 Democrat senators and senators-elect have asked for “a delay in the implementation” of the Obamacare medical device tax. Like most of the significant tax increases in Obamacare, the medical device tax is scheduled to take effect on Jan. 1, 2013, conveniently after the 2012 presidential election. Each of the 18 Democrat signatories voted for or supported Obamacare in the first place. And now they want a sweetheart exemption from one of its most onerous provisions. Even in Washington DC, that shows a lot of gall.

Thanks to the 62,615,406 individuals who took off their thinking caps and re-elected President Barack Obama, thousands upon thousands of folks are receiving their pink slips now or soon will over the next several weeks or months. These lost jobs are often high-paying and are disappearing by the hour. The culprit? It's none other than Obama's landmark legislation, The Affordable Care Act, aka ObamaCare. Re-electing Barack Obama guaranteed that the 2.3% medical device tax, a key funding source for ObamaCare, will go into effect on January 1, 2013. This transfer of money from these companies to the federal government, which...

Conventional wisdom: If you want less of something, put a tax on it. Obamanomics wisdom: Put a tax on... medical devices?! I.e., add another barrier to the industry whose slightest innovations can directly result in streamlined costs, improved efficiency, better health-care options, and saved lives? What the what?Embedded within the shadowy depths of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (sometimes, I like to use its official name just to re-appreciate the irony of "patient protection" and "affordable") is a 2.3 percent excise tax on the sale of taxable medical devices by the manufacturer/importer --- and it's no small thing....

New Mexico Dem Senate candidate Martin Heinrich misleads with defense of medical device tax. Democratic New Mexico congressman and U.S. Senate candidate Martin Heinrich defended his vote to uphold a job-killing provision of Obamacare on Tuesday, despite his previous acknowledgment that the provision would have negative economic consequences for his home state. ... Heinrich voted June 7 of this year to uphold the 2.3 percent excise tax on medical device manufacturers that will take effect next year under Obamacare ... The medical device tax is sure to be a hot topic in the New Mexico campaign. New Mexico is home...

An Indiana-based medical device company is canceling plans to build five new plants in the Midwest because of the hit it will take from the 2.3 percent excise tax imposed by Obamacare.The new tax will cost Cook Medical Inc. between $20 million and $30 million a year, Pete Yonkman, executive director of Cook's strategic business told the Indianapolis Business Journal, limiting the amount Cook can spend on new plants. It took $30 million to revamp an abandoned factory in Canton, Ill. last year that will eventually employ 300 people in this small town."We had hoped, as we get bigger, that...

It is a truth universally acknowledged that, if you want to discourage a certain behavior, you can put a tax on it. (Note: I am in no way endorsing said policy, just pointing out that when you put a tax on something, you can reliably predict that you'll get less of it.) So, one would assume that through the oh-so-august auspices of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which include a forthcoming tax on the medical device industry, President Obama is trying to discourage... uh, medical device innovation? Gee, how nice.Rep. Erik Paulsen (R-Minnesota) is one of the Congressmen...

In March 2010, Nancy Pelosi warned us that we had to pass ObamaCare to “find out what’s in it.” What is in it is jobs for China. What’s not in it is jobs for Americans, as the Boston Globe reports today (via NewsAlert): Boston Scientific Corp. said yesterday that it plans to eliminate 1,200 to 1,400 jobs worldwide during the next 2 1/2 years to free money for new investments, the Natick medical device maker’s second major round of cuts since last year. The company would not say how many jobs will be lost in Massachusetts, where fewer than 2,000...

The first federal regulator I ever knew was a fellow named Ernie. This was 40 years ago, a few weeks after I’d first landed on these shores. I’d run out of money and taken work as kitchen help at a small family firm in New Rochelle, N.Y. The firm made frozen kosher TV dinners. They had a kitchen of course, a preparation room with half a dozen big stainless-steel tables where we made up the dinners, and a couple of freezer rooms where we stored them. The dinners were shipped out to hospitals, nursing homes, and some retail outlets. Because...

Obamacare promises to make medicine cheaper by making it costlier. Case in point: The Senate Finance Committee proposes a brand-new tax on medical devices. Manufacturers of pacemakers, stents, heart valves, artificial hips, motorized wheelchairs, and other therapeutic instruments may have lobbied this tax in half. But whether they endure the $40 billion now in the Finance Committee’s bill or a $20 billion backroom bargain, Obamacare foolishly would hike taxes on companies that generate health-advancing, life-saving mechanisms. This Senate measure would slap a ten-year, $4 billion annual tax on medical implements that retail for $100 or more. “The $4 billion excise...

DANVILLE, Ind. -- A high-tech, rotating bed already saving lives at Indiana hospitals could be critical in the fight against the H1N1 flu. Hendricks Regional, Methodist and St. Vincent hospitals are using the RotoProne bed, a complex contraption that helps alleviate lung pressure and restore normal breathing, 6News' Stacia Matthews reported...

Supposedly the Senate’s version of ObamaCare was written by Finance Chairman Max Baucus, but we’re beginning to wonder if the true authors were Abbott and Costello. The vaudeville logic of the plan is that Congress will tax health care to subsidize people to buy health care that new taxes and regulation make more expensive. Look no further than the $40 billion "fee" that Mr. Baucus wants to impose on medical devices and diagnostic equipment. Device manufacturers would pay $4 billion a year in excise taxes, divvied up among them based on U.S. sales. This translates to an annual income tax...

Even the bravest and most stoic of us cringe at the thought of having a needle inserted into our veins to draw blood, or administer medication through an IV. The experience is particularly unpleasant and sometimes traumatic for those who have veins that are hard to locate, requiring a stretch of time and several attempts until the blood is flowing into the appropriate vial. Anyone who has been through this experience can appreciate the value of a new Israeli-invented device that makes the process far quicker and easier. The Vein Entry Indicator VEID device alerts the doctor, nurse or technician...