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The United States is suffering from a lag in medical innovation, and our healthcare system is bogged down by unnecessary regulations and taxes which affect the lives of everyone in this country. While taxes are necessary the increase in taxation is negatively affecting medical companies under the ACA.

Coupled with the complex route regulatory approvals take, the healthcare system in this country is flailing under the pressure to keep up with high demand and low payout. Patients are treated, often without paying anything for expensive procedures, and the companies who are meant to innovate, foot the bill.

It is time to rethink the cost, time, and effort taken to attain FDA approvals for drugs, medical devices and procedures. Unfortunately, this alone would not signal the end of the trouble for healthcare oriented companies in this country.

A complex combinations of issues needs to be addressed:

• The burdensome overhead which affects businesses ousts innovative startups which could discover the cure for cancer.
• The legal system in this country leads to the practice of defensive medicine whereby doctors perform multiple costly tests on patients to avoid the risk of litigation.
• The taxes which affect these companies isolate them from creating new products, since they’re constantly caught in the cycle of cutting losses.
• Reduced government funding in Research and Development will lead to the lack of innovation in the healthcare sector and around the world. Many of the innovators in our country are leaving for greener pastures overseas, in Canada, China or the United Kingdom, as a result.

The root of the issue appears to stem from the unfair taxation under the Affordable Care Act and the apparent loss of faith in R&D – after all, the United States government has decreased its funding for medical research and development over the course of several years. Currently, it’s at a low point, and will only decline from here.

The ACA: Taxing the Companies Which Help Us Most

Since 2013, the sales of medical devices, including those of pacemakers and surgical equipment have borne a tax of 2.3 percent. This means that for every dollar a medical company makes, they must pay 2.3 cents to the government regardless of whether they made a profit on the sale – i.e. it’s based on gross sales rather than gross profit.

Currently, there’s a moratorium on the Medical Device tax, but that is set to end in December 2017 – the tax will come into full effect as of January 2018 once again.