House Hearing: Obamacare Threatens American Medical Innovation

Kathryn Nix / March 01, 2011

In his State of the Union address, President Obama emphasized the need to focus on innovation, job creation, and global competitiveness as part of a strategy to “win the future.” Unfortunately, by signing Obamacare into law, the White House has endangered these very things.

Until now, the United States has been the world leader in medical innovation, but this is by no means a given for the future. Due to burdensome, time-consuming regulations, medical innovation faces an uphill battle in the United States. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has taken note of this and just this week released a white paper proposing a new approval pathway for medical devices that would accelerate the process and reduce costs for medical device companies. Unfortunately, at the same time that the FDA is taking steps to encourage future innovation, new taxes under Obamacare will further diminish the United States’ competitiveness in the industry. (more…)