A couple good articles worth reading today…
Megan McArdle on medical bankruptcies:
Incidentally, what I was looking for when I stumbled upon the chart in the previous post is the data on bankruptcies in Massachusetts. It's now been four years since Massachusetts passed its health care reform, which seems long enough for reform to have produced a decline in all the medical bankruptcies we are told result from the lack of universal health care in the United States.
Politico on concerned Venture capitalists and health care reform:
Venture capital investors in the medical industry blame their less-than-stellar 2011 predictions on a combination of how long it takes the Food and Drug Administration to approve a pharmaceutical drug or medical device and the large amount of money venture-backed companies in the sector require.
“It really is getting to the point where decision making at FDA is really becoming a major obstacle to VCs committing more money to the life sciences sector,” said Jack Lasersohn, general partner at The Vertical Group.
“It really is getting to the point where decision making at FDA is really becoming a major obstacle to VCs committing more money to the life sciences sector,” said Jack Lasersohn, general partner at The Vertical Group.
Lasersohn said the FDA focuses too much on the risk rather than the benefit of a drug or device, “and as a result, it’s taken much longer to get things approved by the FDA. And in some cases, you can’t get things approved by the FDA.”
NVCA has been pushing for FDA reform to simplify the process by which the agency approves new technologies and drugs. The organization argues that innovators can more easily get their new devices and therapies approved by foreign governments, giving companies incentives to do business overseas rather in the United States.
