Category: Medical Device Tax
Theragenics' recent rhetoric about the medical device tax captures many of the repeal movement's high points: layoffs, restructuring and the myth of a medtech windfall contained in healthcare reform.
The newly unveiled iteration of the Microsoft Xbox One's Kinect camera demonstrates the ability to measure heartbeat by changes in skin tone.
MASSDEVICE ON CALL — In addition to its facial expression detection technology and enhanced voice control, Microsoft's next-generation Xbox game system with the Kinect camera may have a surprising clinical application.
The dual-camera, which can "intuit" a player's skeletal structure and which muscles are engaged or relaxed, can also monitor heart rate - although there is no indication (yet?) that it can recognize heart attacks.
Efforts to undermine the medical device tax are "narrow-minded and dishonest" attempts to win "special treatment," says an editorial published this week in the LA Times.
Efforts to take down the medical device tax have been repeatedly scrutinized by critics that paint repeal efforts as disingenuous or misguided, most recently in an LA Times editorial calling on the industry to defend its logic.
Seemingly everyone on Capitol Hill wants to repeal the medical device tax, but efforts to target the Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act as a whole may be getting in the way.
Last week, the GOP-controlled House of Representatives cast its 37th vote to repeal, de-fund or dismantle the Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act.
The bill, which passed 229-195 along partisan lines, will do nothing to halt the forward progress of the landmark healthcare reform law and amounted to little more than allowing newly minted Republican lawmakers a chance to keep a campaign promise.
A list of some of the tax tabs for medical device companies for the medical device excise tax during Q1
In January 2013, Medical device companies began paying a 2.3% excise tax on U.S. Sales in order to pay for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
The levy is expected to generate some $30 billion over the next 10 years.
MassDevice.com is tracking the tally paid by several medical device companies, based on quarterly earnings report for the first quarter of 2013. We will update the list as more companies returns file in.
Tallies based on companies with Q1 earnings ended on March 31, 2013
The FDA expands regulatory oversight of tanning beds with a proposal to discourage tanning bed use by minors.
In the wake of new evidence that tanning beds increase melanoma risk in young people, the FDA proposed a new warning label for all tanning beds to dissuade use by minors.
The order would require all manufacturers to place a warning label on tanning beds and promotional material warning of danger to minors. This would be similar to the agency's regulation of messaging on cigarette cartons, but it marks a new step to regulate sunlamps as a higher-risk device.
Medical device industry lobbying group AdvaMed is turning to those employed at medtech companies to spur more activity in efforts to repeal a 2.3% excise tax that took effect at the start of the year.
