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Thursday, October 10, 2013

Dumb Ron Johnson speeds decline of Health Care innovation with Shutdown, something he accused ObamaCare of doing.

Opposite day ever day in Republican world: Dumb Ron Johnson has always opposed ObamaCare because it would stop medical innovation and bring about a major decline in the worlds “best” health care system. Besides not having the best health care system in the world, is he right about innovation? Has he ever been right about anything?

No. It turns out Johnson and his tea party Republican friends are the ones actually bringing about a decline in our medical leadership, all because of their lousy shutdown. And so ends another mindless Dumb Ron Johnson talking point. Ironically, Republicans have no problem creating "uncertainty" on Wall Street to achieve their goal:   
Steve Brozak-Forbes: As a Wall Street healthcare analyst, I am acutely aware of how vulnerable the financial ecosystem that supports our healthcare investment, development and delivery has become. Every day the shutdown and talk of debt default continues, it has inescapable negative impact on current and future healthcare in the U.S. The National Institute of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation(NSF) are withholding grants scheduled to start, have stopped processing new applications, and the NIH has halted internal research with a 73% furlough. Consequently scientific progress has been stunted, and there are no guarantees that grant processing will catch up by the next cycle - especially because you can't start and stop such a system on a whim. Continuity of development is essential because it takes years, sometimes a decade, to traverse the FDA approval process for a new drug and there are so few successes.

If the flow of new ideas for improving healthcare becomes questionable; if the FDA clearance process becomes questionable;if government grants become questionable, then financial risk grows and investors will look elsewhere to invest their funds. Investors and commercial science managers don't just like predictability, they live for it. What we are witnessing today is anathema to their very existence.

The shutdown must be stopped immediately for the sake of the U.S. healthcare system. At some point, the impact of the shutdown on healthcare will spin out of control and no amount of political wrangling will stop the decline. We run the risk of eroding investor and public confidence in the essential growth of the entirety of our medical system. Unfortunately the only real warning sign that may end this ruinous path can be downward market swings. And if a loss of confidence is the cause of the market loss no bipartisan legislation could make our healthcare system financially or physically whole. 

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