With Obamacare - Medical Innovation in danger

Good healthcare is not cheap, and cheap healthcare is not good. The hallmark of the American healthcare system is how we incorporate both leading edge therapies coupled with mass scale manufacturing techniques to increase the quality of care while driving costs down.
The software company I work for deals almost exclusively with life sciences companies. I get to see large and small medical device manufacturers, plus biotech and pharmaceutical firms all over North America. What I can say with steely eyed certainty is we are in the golden age of medical innovation. With equal certainty I can tell you this wave of innovation can be destroyed by the proposed government takeover of the healthcare sector.
Government controlled systems systematically starve the use of new drugs, devices and procedures. The deployment rate by government run healthcare providers of these new life saving technologies is minimal and years behind a market driven system. Why? They deem them too expensive. Cost control, not patient care is the primary driver in government systems. Just ask the Canadians.
Dr. Anne Doig, the president of the Canadian Medical Association, described the Canadian health system as imploding. Waiting times for critical procedures are increasing dramatically. Treatments available in the U.S. are now denied in Canada. That’s why they come to America, with its’ private sector led healthcare system, and they pay for it out of pocket.
The American private sector is humming with a pipeline of soon to be released wonders. I have seen two companies with late stage therapies for Lupus. A friend of mine works for a company that is developing a system that analyzes genetic markers associated with early detection of a dozen different types of cancer. Another is a new non-surgical, removable hearing and communication device designed to imperceptibly transmit sound via the teeth to help people with single-sided deafness.
How about something for your heart? Continuous-Flow Ventricular assist devices are tiny, powerful; 3-ounce med devices that are surgically attached alongside the heart, that quietly and effectively take over the pumping ability of the heart. The technologies I’ve described represent far less than 1 % of the next wave of medical breakthroughs…if we keep the American free enterprise model in place.
Sidney Taurel, the former CEO of the pharma company Eli Lilly said: “America, though hardly free of government intervention ... is the one market where global innovators find the incentive they need to keep pushing the boundaries."
Unfortunately, the health care bills moving through Congress could dramatically curtail medical innovation. Imposing price controls on drugs and treatments, or indirectly forcing their prices down by means of a "public option" or expanded public insurance programs, would reduce the incentive for innovators to develop new treatments.
The innovation pipeline relies on several types of companies to effectively function. The large Pharma and Med Device companies have the raw capital, the mass manufacturing capacity and the wholesale and retail distribution and delivery systems to bring cost effective new medical products to market. The small companies have the agility to develop and manage the clinical trials of thousands of potential new breakthrough technologies. Once these are approved by the FDA and the company can bring its wonder drug or device to market, they are typically bought by the giant companies. This investment cycle is what has produced 95% of all medical innovations in the last 30 years.
Not to leave out the Government, as they try to get in on the innovation pipeline too. The problem with the government led projects is they tend to fund technologies that feel good to the political class. Politically motivated approaches such as human Embryonic stem cell research (hEsc) are darlings of the Government funded research community. Problem is - no therapies have been developed from hEsc research, while dozens of therapies have resulted from the market driven adult stem-cell research. The market rewards success and penalizes failure on its own terms without accounting for political tastes.
The Venture Capital firms and the business community demand a financial reward in the future to risk gobs of capital today. The Scientists that develop the intellectual property that is the heart of the innovation pipeline also rely on financial gain. This industry employs millions of people with high paying jobs in the US, jobs that will continue long after “shovel ready” jobs created by temporary government stimulus money runs out.
Conversely the government people who now want to run our healthcare system are the same jokers that run the Post Office and the "cash for clunkers" program. Do you want these bureaucrats making your families medical choices for you? Remember once we start down the slope towards socialized medicine we cannot go back. The innovative medical treatment you now receive will wither and die, only to be replaced by long waiting lines for rationed services. Instead of advanced diagnosis and treatment options with cutting edge technologies we will be subjected to the dull and aged technologies of yesteryear.
Let the golden age of innovation continue. Don’t let our precious healthcare system be destroyed by Socialized Medicine. Remember Socialist systems of any kind guarantee only one thing - an equal share of misery.