MASSDEVICE ON CALL — Device makers and industry supporters have largely overstated the negative impacts of the medical device tax, according to an editorial in Bloomberg.
"Just about everything the medical-device industry says about the tax is either untrue or exaggerated," according to the paper. "Lawmakers shouldn’t be so gullible, even when – perhaps especially when – industry lobbyists produce studies seeming to back their claims."
The industry’s warnings that the tax could push jobs overseas, hamper innovation by putting strain on R&D budgets and limit patient access to medical devices due to increased prices are based on assumptions that "conflict with economic research, overstate companies’ incentives to move jobs offshore, and ignore the positive effect of new demand" created by the expanded pool of insured patients, according to Bloomberg.
"Congress may well withdraw the medical-device tax," the writers concluded. "If it does, it won’t be because the industry mustered a strong economic case. It will be because it’s too easy to pull the wool over lawmakers’ eyes."
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