Last week, the Advanced Medical Technology Association (AdvaMed; Washington) put on its Superman cape and unveiled a set of policy recommendations that it hopes will preserve America's position as a leader in medical technology innovation.

Dubbed the Competitiveness Agenda (which can be seen in more detail by clicking here), AdvaMed is issuing out a call to arms to the government to not overlook the med-tech industry. 

Here's the problem that the med-tech industry is facing. Imagine for one moment that you're on the brink of not being able to pay your mortgage. Slowly and steadily you're getting behind on the bills and you realize that it's going to come to a point that you can no longer pay your mortgage. The first instinct is to call the bank, but the response you would often get is "wait until you're behind in your payments, then we'll see what we can do."  

The problem is, you don't want to get behind. You don't want your home to go into foreclosure. You want help now. The same thing exists with the med-tech industry. As it stands now the industry isn't really in dire straits. It's headed that way, due to cumbersome FDA regulations and heavy fees on med-tech companies.  

So AdvaMed's policy recommendations are right on time. The federal government has to ask itself if these recommendations are worth implementing now, or if it can stand to afford letting med-tech slip deeper and deeper into a hole that will consume America's top position in innovation.