Expediting breakthrough medical device reimbursement has become a recent public policy issue. This paper provides evidence of the value of faster reimbursement of new medical devices using a comprehensive dataset of past approved devices. The estimation considers the cost and patient health impacts of delays from FDA approval to CMS reimbursement and relying on existing evidence indicating an average delay of 4.7 years. We find that observed postponements of reimbursement and coverage for devices approved between 2010 and 2022 had the delays in health improvements valued about 11 times larger than the savings in spending.
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