Media Equipment Maker Terumo Cardiovascular Trying To Monopolize Repair Of Costly Gear

Terumo Cardiovascular, a company that makes six-figure medical equipment used in heart surgeries, is apparently keen on attracting the ire of the “right to repair” movement. But given the Trump administration’s assault on state and federal consumer protection, it’s not clear they’ll face many meaningful repercussions for it.

In a letter obtained by 404 Media, the company has apparently been contacting hospitals, telling them that they’ll no longer allow hospitals’ repair technicians to maintain or fix the expensive equipment (even if perfectly qualified), and that all repairs must now be done by the manufacturer itself. They’re also discontinuing the arbitrary certification process techs need to be qualified in the first place:

“The company, Terumo Cardiovascular, makes a device called the Advanced Perfusion System 1 Heart Lung Machine, which is used to reroute blood during open-heart surgeries and essentially keeps a patient alive during the surgery. Last month, the company sent hospitals a letter alerting them to the “discontinuation of certification classes,” meaning it “will no longer offer certification classes for the repair and/or preventative maintenance of the System 1 and its components.”

It’s a way to drive up the cost of equipment repairs to the benefit of the company. It’s the same thing we’ve seen in countless other industries ranging from game consoles to John Deere tractors. It’s increasingly the sort of thing that’s incurred the wrath of the (previous) FTC and the countless states that have passed right to repair legislation over the last few years.

The problem for reformers is that while numerous states have passed right to repair legislation, the laws currently aren’t being meaningfully enforced, so companies are ignoring them. And with a flurry of costly and complicated legal fights heading states’ way across everything from immigration to the environment due to Trumpism, I tend to suspect stuff like right to repair fights will be among the first to fall through the cracks.

And while right to repair was a popular battleground for Lina Khan’s FTC, it’s extremely unlikely to see the same attention under the more corporate-power-friendly Trump administration, which is very busy taking a hatchet to the entirety of federal consumer protection under the pretense of “populism.”