Government Already Moves to Decrease Patient Choice

Reuters ^ | May 6, 2009 | Alina Piacentino

[MattAMatt]

BOSTON, May 6 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- In a white paper released today by Ernst Berndt and Mark Trusheim of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, research shows that eliminating FDA's preemption protection would decrease patients' access to life-enhancing medical devices, increase health care costs and reduce medical device industry employment.

The paper, "The Economic Impact of Eliminating Federal Preemption for Medical Devices on Patients, Innovation and Jobs," comes as Congress considers legislation that would remove Federal preemption of state rules and litigation that exists for a small percentage of medical devices that undergoes the most rigorous FDA review. The report highlights the damaging economic, health and societal impacts the legislation would have on patients, medical device industry innovation and employees, and the public health.

"As economic and health care researchers, we felt it was important to examine how this regulatory change could harm innovation, and ultimately impact the patients who rely on these treatments and the people who are employed by the device industry" said co-author Ernst Berndt, Ph.D., Louis E. Seley Professor in Applied Economics, MIT Sloan School of Management. "Congress should carefully weigh any policies that could increase health care costs and reduce high-paying jobs, particularly during an economic downturn."

Alina Piacentino, +1-202-778-1295, apiacentino@apcoworldwide.com, for Berndt Associates

[MattAMatt]

How is more Government Involvement going to help?

[samtheman]

Ask yourself this:

How much would cell-phone service cost, and how good would it be, if it were run by the government?

How much would computers cost, and how good would they be, if they were made by the government?

Or even: how much would Vista cost, and how many bugs would it have, if it had been developed by the government?

[gusopol3]

Medical innovation would be affected, as decisions about health care products shift from expert, science-based regulators to untrained, non-expert juries, creating a duplicative, fragmented and inconsistent national framework administered by state and federal courts

[gusopol3]

I think it’s more like , how much harder would it be to do business if every state were allowed to print its own money?There is a “federal pre-emption.” My guess is that the reason MIT is interested in it is that the inventors don’t want to find out whether some trial lawyer somewhere can get a jury in , say CA, to prohibit use of the device there, etc, etc.

[Vaduz]

Never has yet.

[newnhdad]

yeah, people may die sooner without care but they’ll have electronic medical records..

sarc.

[Grampa Dave]

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