Notable and Quotable:  Obamacare and Innovation

"Even in advance of the path now underway with the 2010 PPACA legislation, the U.S. health care system was already among the most regulated industries in the nation, adding hundreds of billions of dollar per year on the backs of America’s taxpayers.  Meanwhile, entrepreneurs in the health care sector are beginning to understand that enormously bloated regulations and government intrusion by the FDA are even now hindering research and development and creating untenable delays and costs to product development. Innovation, the core to the advancement of health care, is at far greater risk under the PPACA with its new regulatory bodies, its new taxes on entrepreneurs and the very industries responsible for medical innovation, and its top-down shift away from specialty care toward less sophisticated primary care."

"But the true costs will ultimately be borne by Americans, Costs to patients and their families including delays in access to innovative medical technology that is safer and more effective, higher costs of new technology passed  on to consumers, and limits and delay in gains in life expectancy and quality of life improvements are all inevitable. Stifling innovation by the PPACA will dramatically impact American entrepreneurs, doctors, investors, and companies as well.  Economic effects to this $80 billion American industry will be profound.  High-way, high-skill jobs will be lost from the medial technology insure that employs 357,000 Americans, and every med-tech job means up to more than 3.5 additional jobs in the overall economy, spending on the state. Inevitably, the spiral of higher health care cost due to government intrusion will invite even more government creations, so that potential reduction in health care costs from innovation will never see the light of day."

From In Excellent Health: Setting the Record Straight on America’s Health Care (Hoover Institution Press, 2011), by Scott W. Atlas, MD, Professor of Radiology, Stanford University Medical Center

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