About 1 million knee and hip implants are installed in patients every year. None of them, however, have warranties. Unlike pacemakers, which are usually guaranteed for 5-7 years, joint implants have the highest profit margin in part due to not including warranties.
High Profits on Second Implants
Joint implants made $6.7 billion in profits for implant manufacturers in 2009 alone. Each device is sold for approximately $3,000 to $15,000. Let’s assume the possibility of a joint failing is 5% (which is the industry standard for many joint replacements.) Now let’s look at 5% of 1 million implants (or 50,000 patients) that will require a second device sold at full price. By multiplying the median cost of an implant, $9,000 times 50,000 revision surgeries, the annual profit on revision surgeries is approximately $450,000,000. (These are not exact numbers, but you can see just how much money is being made on revision surgeries.)
Will Health Care Reform Ease the Costs?
Due to not having warranties, or discounts on revision surgeries, American taxpayers must pay. Medicare is paying for about half of all joint replacement surgeries. In March, 2010 legislation passed which did not deal with the cost of defective hips. Legislation could cause artificial joints instead to cost more. It includes an excise tax on the sale of joints which hopes to raise $20 billion in the next ten years. The tax will be included in cost of implants and passed onto costumers, private insurance and to the taxpayers through Medicare.
Why Don’t Hip Manufacturers Offer Warranties?
They blame a hip joint’s malfunctioning on surgeons, due to improper placement or on the patients themselves. They cite having no control on how much a patient weighs, whether a patient follows post-surgery guidelines or how they use the joint. For these reasons they do not offer a warranty and make a substantial profit from not having any assurances.
As a Maryland personal injury lawyer who is helping represent people who are suffering from the DePuy ASR hip recall it’s shocking to see just how much money is made when a product that should last 10-15 years (25 years in the case of DePuy’s ASR hip) fails much less than that.
If you’re suffering from the recall of the DePuy ASR hip I suggest that you contact a DePuy Hip recall lawyer right away to learn what your rights are.