Here’s an excellent article by Dick Gephardt. Remember Dick Gephardt? Smart guy with an important message. Buzz is that he may be sharing this message from a more prominent perch in the near future. But buzz, as you know, often turns out to be just that.
In any case, enjoy this article (from Politico):
Medical innovation is economic key
By: Dick Gephardt
As Washington searches for solutions to continue our nation’s economic recovery, it’s time to cultivate new growth strategies.
Medical innovation should be key. It can create millions of high-paying jobs, increase our global competitiveness and help reduce our nation’s growing deficit.
Experts project that the health care sector will generate 3 million jobs from 2006 to 2016, with significant growth due to medical innovation. From lab coats to hard hats, medical innovation creates an array of high-paying positions across academic disciplines, management fields, health services and skilled trades.
Much of the promise from medical discoveries, new technologies and cutting-edge procedures is a direct result of America’s longtime leadership in medical innovation. Yet global leadership is now ours to lose unless we make a national commitment to needed strategic and sustained investments and partnerships to keep the U.S. competitive.
For medical and life sciences, research can transform local economies. Even in Michigan, which has seen serious job losses in many sectors, the number of people working in life sciences increased by more than 10 percent between 1999 and 2006. Average wages jumped 29 percent.
In Iowa, medical schools and teaching hospitals have a combined economic impact of $4.1 billion, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges. In Virginia, the economic impact is $9.9 billion. In Ohio and California, it is $27.2 billion and $41.6 billion, respectively.
One need only look to the Cleveland Clinic to see what’s possible. In addition to its world-renowned health care, the Cleveland Clinic has helped launch more than 200 cutting-edge inventions per year . It has spun off 24 separate companies in the past decade.
Cultivating this sort of activity on a national scale can spur new businesses and establish a truly 21st-century work force, fueled by the skilled workers and increased productivity that are byproducts of continued innovation.
Today, many experts suggest that we could forfeit our leadership if we do not address the challenges that have emerged. We are plagued with a shortage of capital and arbitrary limits on private investment. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s approval process is lengthy, costly and presents more uncertainty for struggling entrepreneurs.
Worst of all, our talent pool is shrinking. The U.S. ranked 16 out of 29 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries in science literacy, according to the latest scorecard from the National Center for Education Statistics, and 24 out of 29 OECD countries in mathematics.
We must do more to produce the next generation of highly educated scientific innovators. And we must train and retrain students and adults for jobs to support medical innovation.
With high unemployment and skyrocketing deficits, we need a national strategy that will help us innovate our way out of our current economic crisis and create a path that ensures long-term opportunities.
This strategy could draw on the best of what we’ve learned from public and private sectors. It would create incentives for sustained public and private investment in medical research, education and training.
It would encourage public policies that spur technology transfer, appropriately protect intellectual property and help attract venture financing at all stages of research and development. It also would establish a tax and regulatory climate that encourages private enterprises — large and small — to participate in medical innovation.
For more than a century, the U.S. has been synonymous with medical discovery and achievement. This excellence has dramatically improved our quality of life, driven our ability to compete globally and created countless new domestic employment and economic opportunities.
Let’s make the decisions and investments necessary to continue to reap the enormous economic and human benefits made possible through medical innovation.
Dick Gephardt, former House majority leader, is now president and chief executive officer of Gephardt Government Affairs and serves as chairman of the Council for American Medical Innovation.
