Cheaper medical device registrant fees are effectively subsidies to the medical device industry. The utility of such subsidies seems significantly higher than a federal budget cut of 0.06%. The nature of this cost increase, as the article points out, is more damaging to smaller companies. But innovative solutions in the Biomedical Engineering industry often come from such companies, which means saddling with an increased financial burden may impact or even prevent the development of novel technologies with great medical potential. These companies already often struggle to challenge larger mega corporations, which have connections and experience that make it easier to navigate FDA rules.

There are many subsidies that are less useful to all of Americans in the budget, such as the almost $24 billion corn subsidy this year. I would hope that the Trump Administration would target those, or other sources of overblown government spending, before increasing regulatory burden on the medical device development industry.