Memo to the antitrust division of the Justice Department:

In selling products, device companies have required hospitals to sign contracts that contain confidentiality clauses under which facilities agree not to disclose what they paid for the product.

It's just one of the legal inanities contained in an excellent medical device overview story in today's New York Times that reveals how industry lobbyists have:

• Kept prices opaque;


• Avoided the establishment of databases or registries that would allow comparisons between competing technologies or devices;


• Paid surgeons to maintain brand loyalty to particular devices;


• Successfully lobbied Medicare to not interfere with any of the above.

Oh, and the $4 billion surcharge device makers might have to pay as part of health care reform? That will be whittled back, too, to a mere pittance of the extraordinary profits earned by leading device makers (the story has an excellent chart showing those firms earning between 23 and 30 percent pretax margins).

The great fear among some health care reform advocates is that millions of Americans required to buy health coverage under the law will be socked with huge new insurance bills at a time when they face sky-high unemployment, lower wages, and diminished retirement prospects. Couple that with the fact that every major health care special interest made out like bandits in the "reform" and you have a recipe for a major political backlash.