With the United States' population aging and people living longer, orthopedics companies are looking at a trend that should have their industry primed for future growth.
But in Warsaw -- "the orthopedic capital of the world" -- economic development officials aren't seeing the jobs boom they'd expect from those demographics.
Mark Dobson, president and CEO of the Warsaw Kosciusko Chamber of Commerce, said local companies represent about half of the world market for orthopedic devices. He added that the demand for artificial knees, for example, is projected to increase 600 percent by 2020.
"With that kind of demand, you'd expect jobs to be added," Dobson said. "They are being added, but they're being added overseas, and we're seeing very limited job growth."
Dobson and many others say a new medical-device tax is to blame. Beginning Jan. 1, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will require companies to pay a 2.3 percent tax on sales revenue from low-tech "devices" such as surgical gloves as well as sophisticated machines and implants.
"Not seeing job growth tells us that we've got a real problem with this law," Dobson said.
AdvaMed, a trade
association of health care technology companies, published a study in September last year that concluded the new tax would put 43,000 of the U.S. medical-device industry's roughly 400,000 jobs at risk....
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