jmo, not investment advice...

Other boards have given lots of noise as to why med equipment and esp device companies have been taken down hard in recent days, and there are many things to point to. imo, much of this selling has been tied to the broad market takedown (parital list of anxiety sources: tech inventory cycle noise; housing numbers weak; gdp bump is all stimulus and non-sustainable; unemployment is awful; dem HC and tax bills will be awful for the economy; Bair/FDIC noise re big banks should be able to fail and the industry needs to have more financing on budget vs slamming the remaining healthy banks -- where's the woody allen sock full of horse dung when it's needed?; stimulus and Fed ops drawing to a close; blah, blah, blah). But that's not all.

More broadly, as reported this week in the WSJ and otherwise, the drafting of Reid's Health Care "Reform" Bill has included some potentially dreadful implications for medical device companies as to "taxing innovation" by imposing onerous excise taxes on device sales. While several moderate democratic senators and Rep senator Snowe (who was originally the only Rep to suggest she might support the bill if it met several criteria she wanted and has since stated she will not support the Dem bill as drafted) and essentially the entire Rep party has been galvanized to say ~DOA, imo it is comforting to see the AP reporting specifics on those scores.

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http://www.longislandpress.com/2009/10/2...
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Then again, the downside volumes on these stocks have been muted... so perhaps all this thrashing about is insignificant to most longs paying attention and concluding the legislative process will find some sanity as regards excise taxes on innovation.