News

• Government & Legislative Affairs 
• Legal

WASHINGTON – Today, AdvaMed, the Medtech Association, submitted a letter to the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability regarding the Committee’s consideration of an issue that threatens to undermine the foundations of our health care system: outside financing that generates mass tort litigation over important, beneficial medical devices.

Estimated spending on medical device claims solicitation advertising increased dramatically from the first to the second quarter, when $4.25 million was spent to air these ads during television programming throughout the nation. • In June alone, spending on these ads skyrocketed from the prior month to more than $3 million—the highest in a month since October 2019. • More than 12,000 television advertisements soliciting medical device injury claims aired in the second quarter of 2023—roughly the same number that aired in the first quarter.

More than 12,000 television advertisements soliciting medical device injury claims aired in the first quarter of the year, but this was less than half that of the previous quarter. In the first quarter from January through March, over $1.3 million was spent to air these litigation-related ads and this was just over half what was spent on these ads during the October through December period.  Monthly first-quarter advertising peaked in January by measure of both ad count and estimated ad spending when nearly 4,400 ads aired at a cost of about $610,000.

What GAO Found. Third-party litigation financing is an arrangement where a funder that is not a party to a lawsuit agrees to provide funding to a litigant (typically a plaintiff) or law firm in exchange for an interest in the potential recovery in a lawsuit (see figure).