Is the Medical Device Tax Still of Interest?

Based on Google search trends, interest in the medical device tax has fallen significantly since the tax went into effect at the beginning of the year. Interest in the tax peaked in December of last year, when last-minute efforts to repeal it ramped up. Since then, searches for "medical device tax" have steadily fallen, and are now a little more than a quarter than what they were in December 2012, measured by Google data. The recent announcement that medtech companies have now paid more than $1 billion towards the tax seems to have had little effect on search volume related to the tax. The inclusion of that story on Qmed News prompted a reader to write in asking why we bothered covering it.

Check out Google Trends' data here:
Google's search trends analytics began to receive significant attention several years ago when it was used to track flu trends in the United States. Since then, however, the results have been called into question when it became apparent that Google's predictions for influenza outbreaks were twice that of estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Still, the rhetoric surround the tax remains nearly unchanged. The Washington Post recently featured a headline with the title "Killing the medical device industry" that echoes the messaging found in many other editorials--just not those in The New York Times or The L.A. Times.