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25 months ago, we celebrated the two-year delay of the medical device tax. Two weeks ago, we celebrated again with another two-year delay, retroactive to December 31, 2017.

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Presumably you were preparing for January 29, when the Treasury Department was expecting your tax payment.

You dodged that bullet. What are you going to do with the money you saved?

THE TALK TRACK
On the AdvaMed site: “AdvaMed… opposed the 2.3 percent medical device excise tax because it harms job creation, deters medical innovation needed to save and improve patients’ lives, and inhibits economic growth.”

In pieces:
• “Harms job creation.” Are you planning to hire?
• “Deters medical innovation.” Are you boosting your R&D?
• “Inhibits economic growth.” I’m not smart enough to comment.

CONTROVERSIAL
Back in my early months leading the group, I wrote an anti-tax discussion thinking, surely, all the members of a group called the Medical Devices Group would be anti-tax. I was wrong.

Back in June 2015, I shut after 680 comments, some of them downright nasty.

I later featured this challenge from Paul Stein here, paraphrasing,

“The extra income can’t simply be bonuses. If we don’t retool, purchase equipment and facilities, or hire, we’ll show we’ve just been crying wolf.”

So tell us in today’s comments, what are you going to do with the extra money?

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BAD FUNDRAISING

I got a LinkedIn solicitation so bad that I had to write about it.
https://medgroup.biz/bad-fundraising
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SUPER BOWL WINNER

No one predicted this Super Bowl accurately. The closest was Bob Dummer from Teleflex with a guess of Eagles 34 – Patriots 27 so he and three friends will be my guests at MDTX on April 3.

The rest of you, don’t despair. We lowered prices! See https://medgroup.biz/10x

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Make it a great week.

Joe Hage
Medical Devices Group Leader

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Julie Omohundro
Principal Consultant at Class Three, LLC
I don’t think the cost of healthcare has increased all that much since I was in college. What has skyrocketed is expenditures. The only argument I’m aware of on how increased regulatory burden could result in increased healthcare expenditures is due to increased consumer confidence in healthcare products. While there may be some of that, I think the overwhelming cause is that the expenditures are being paid for with OPM. Doesn’t matter much whether the money cones from insurance premiums or taxes, I don’t think.

Julie Omohundro
Principal Consultant at Class Three, LLC
Ginger, I woulnt think consultants are especially cost effective for companies big enough to staff a regulatory department?

Ginger Cantor
Founder/Principal Consultant at Centaur Consulting LLC
Yeah, Medtronic used that tax break as well as moving headquarters to Ireland to line its executives pockets. And personally I can tell you, people are not using the tax money to hire internally. Most regulatory people I speak to that are captured employees are swamped from increasing regulations globally. If that extra “found” device tax money is being spent on regulatory, it is on consultants, good for me, but sorry for the regular RA crew in a company.

Jon Gardner
Technology Consultant
We’ve been using greenlight.guru, which is excellent, but we spend at least one additional full-time employee on regulatory issues, for just one Class 2 product. Right now we’re spending more than that, because a competitor’s product has had a serious issue with patient injury and death, and that company has managed to convince the FDA to scrutinize everyone else’s devices rather than focus on the design flaws in their own device.

That said, the idea that the government could do a better job with the 2.5% than private enterprise seems to ignore the abysmal performance record of big government. It’s big government that has driven up the cost of healthcare in general, primarily via regulatory burden. Sometimes that burden is bureaucratic in origin, sometimes it’s a result of corporate lobbying trying to keep the “little guy” out of the market. Either way, less government would result in lower healthcare costs and better outcomes.

Mark Pierce
Director of Sales, Dohmen Life Science Services an Eversana Company
Thank you for sharing your experience on bad fundraising (it’s spot on).

Benjamin Ghanoongooi
Senior Quality Assurance Consultant at GIL Intl CSvs Inc
Very interesting article , Thanks for sharing.