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Pence, Coats Look for Growth in Medical Device Industry

Indiana leaders at both the federal and state level are exploring ways to encourage more growth in the state’s medical device industry.

Later this summer, the Indiana legislature will devote a study committee to investigating ways the state can help medical device manufacturers.

Earlier this week, U.S. Senator Dan Coats sat down with leaders from the industry in northern Indiana.  He says he came away with two avenues for helping the sector, including getting the Food and Drug Administration to ease some of the lengthy restrictions on approving new technology.

“Some of these approvals take seven, eight years,” Coats said. “So they develop a new product and it takes forever to get through the bureaucracy in Washington – by the time they get it, something else new has come up.”

The other way to help the industry is something both Dan Coats and Governor Mike Pence cite as a serious barrier to growth – the medical device tax contained within the Affordable Care Act. 

Pence notes that 50 percent of the medical devices used throughout the world are manufactured in Indiana.

“So this gross corporate tax on medical device manufacturers is and will continue to be a direct hit on jobs in Indiana,” Pence said.

Coats says a bipartisan group of lawmakers is looking for ways to replace the revenue that would be lost by eliminating the tax.

Brandon Smith is excited to be working for public radio in Indiana. He has previously worked in public radio as a reporter and anchor in mid-Missouri for KBIA Radio out of Columbia. Prior to that, he worked for WSPY Radio in Plano, Illinois as a show host, reporter, producer and anchor. His first job in radio was in another state capitol, in Jefferson City, Missouri, as a reporter for three radio stations around Missouri. Brandon graduated from the University of Missouri-Columbia with a Bachelor of Journalism in 2010, with minors in political science and history. He was born and raised in Chicago.