Healthcare Overhaul and Impact on T1D

[Lance]

Really hoping not to touch off another rough debate with this, but I ran across this article today written by a parent of a cwd. See the full article here.

FTA: In order to pay for its new entitlement, the Senate Finance Committee bill (Baucus) proposes to tax medical-device manufacturers $40 billion over the next ten years. To the average person, medical-device manufacturers may not mean much. They produce heart monitors and stents and pacemakers. They also produce insulin pumps. (emphasis added) My 16-year-old son, who has had Type I diabetes (an autoimmune disease distinct from Type II) since the age of nine, depends on a pump to live a reasonably normal life. If he didn?t have an insulin pump ? a device the size of a cell phone that delivers insulin through a tube directly under his skin ? he would be required to give himself as many as four injections a day, as he did before he got the pump. And his life expectancy would be shorter. (snip)

While the U.S. leads the world in medical technology, most device makers are not huge conglomerates, but smaller companies already hurting in this recession. According to the Advanced Medical Technology Association, the industry consists of about 6,000 companies, most of which earn less than $100 million annually. The chief executive of B. Braun Medical, which makes pain-control devices, told the Washington Post that paying his share of the new tax would ?exceed my research and development budget.? The $4 billion annual tax would represent about 40 percent of the industry?s outlay for research and development ($9.6 billion).

[deafmack]

I agree with you on this. If they tax the companies that make these medical devices like insulin pumps you can well bet they will pass the tax onto the consumer and when it is a lifesaving device like an insulin pump, it is just plain wrong IMHO

[Toni]

Start calling your State representatives in Senate and House to protest. Follow up in writing.