While I think this article may help sell papers, I am surprised with how unbalanced the reporting is. The article advances the notion that venture capital firms are politicizing the repeal of the device tax and that medical devices are potentially harmful, with no balancing data (which is broadly available) that FDA uncertainty has had a crushing impact on medical device innovation as measured by seed capital invested, medical device IPOs, and the flight of medtech to foreign shores. Nor does the article discuss that while any medical device has the potential to do harm, healthcare has been transformed over the last 50 years, where we live with disease (chronic care) instead of dying from acute events (heart attacks being the number one killer), and that medical devices have played a critical role in that transformation.

The medical device industry has partnered with the clinical community, pharma/biotech and patient groups in this transformation and brought heart/lung bypass, implantable and external defibrillators, sophisticated monitoring technology, etc. that work to preserve and extend life.

By not speaking about the impact of regulatory uncertainty and the positive impact of medical innovation on this vital U.S. industry to my home state (MA) and others, the article is as tilted and unbalanced as the author suggests of the VC community.