Medical tech group optimistic on healthcare reform

The head of the largest medical technology trade group in the US told Massachusetts medical device executives today he is optimistic about the prospects for healthcare reform in the first year of the Obama administration.

Stephen J. Ubl, chief executive of the Advanced Medical Technology Association, known as AdvaMed, said White House officials "have made a calculation that healthcare has more of a political payoff than energy in the short term." They've also "paid a lot of attention to the Clinton reform debacle" of the early 1990s so as not to repeat the mistakes of the last Democratic administration, Ubl said.

Key components of the Obama health plan, many of them mirroring steps taken in Massachusetts, incdlue universal health coverage, subsidies to assure affordability, insurance reform, and measures to encourage prevention and better management of chronic diseases, Ubl said.

"We're fairly bullish about this actually happening," he told more than 300 representatives of medical innovation companies during the annual conference of the Massachusetts Medical Device Industry at the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum in Boston.

While he said the Obama administration is likely to be pursue its reform with more transparency and bipartisanship than its Clinton-era predecessors, Ubl warned of potential "flashpoints" if government seeks to compete with private health insurers or overregulates the makers of medical devices.

"We have some concerns about seeing the 800-pound gorilla become a 1,000-pound gorilla on healthcare issues," Ubl said. "We have to guard against an innovation blind spot, which is controlling costs by stifling innovation."
(By Robert Weisman, Globe staff)