How Time Flies When You’re (Not) Having Fun
(Posted on LinkedIn March 23, 2026)
I would ask if it’s really already the fourth week of March, but I’m still agog over the fact that it really is already 2026. With that in mind, let’s revisit some of the goings-on in the third week of March without debating the merits (or lack thereof) of green beer.
As the saying goes, there’s good news and bad news here, depending on how this all lands on you.
FTC goes all in on healthcare fraud enforcement
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission announced March 20 that it has formed a task force within the agency to crack down on violations of the law in the field of healthcare. The agency made note of its efforts to thwart two recent transactions in the med tech field, signaling that it will continue to keep close tabs on mergers and acquisitions among device makers.
FTC made note of the fact that it successfully challenged the effort by Edwards Lifesciences to acquire JenaValve Technologies. That challenge had taken form in August 2025 and led to a district court’s grant of preliminary injunction against the deal in January 2026. Edwards stated Jan. 9 that it would scuttle its proposed acquisition of JenaValve, a transaction that had been valued at nearly $950 million.
The acquisition would have given Edwards entrée into devices for both aortic stenosis and pure regurgitation. The latter of these may ultimately be added to the current Medicare coverage memo for TAVR devices as I discussed when CMS first reopened the coverage memo earlier this year.
FTC also crowed about its block of a proposed merger between Alcon and Lensar, the termination of which was the subject of a March 17 press release (break out the green beer or no?) The agency’s opposition was based on the two company’s preeminence in the field of femtosecond laser-assisted cataract surgery, but Alcon argued in a March 16 statement that the deal would have enhanced innovation in the field despite the FTC’s concerns about competition.
FTC chairman Andrew Ferguson said in an accompanying memorandum that several agency offices will team up to staff this task force, including the Bureau of Competition and the Bureau of Consumer Protection. While it seems likely that the agency will continue to scour the landscape for other opportunities to suppress consolidation in the healthcare space, it seems unlikely that FTC will be as expansive in its interpretation of the market impact of transaction as it was under the leadership of former FTC chairwoman Lina Khan.
Danaher the winner in Apple, Masimo patent scrum
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit decreed in a March 19 opinion that the Federal Trade Commission ruled properly in determining that the Apple Watch Series 6 infringed on devices made by Masimo Corp. This is good news not just for Masimo, but also for Danaher Corp., which announced last month that it would acquire Masimo for roughly $10 billion.
This particular iteration of the Apple/Masimo patent wars commenced in 2020 when Apple launched its Watch Series 6 in the U.S. Masimo and Ceracor Labs Inc. filed a complaint with the International Trade Commission (ITC) in June 2021, but the suite of patent lawsuits between these companies has trended in both directions, with Apple suing Masimo in 2022 in Delaware district court over several of the former’s own patents.
It seems unlikely that this is the end of the patent conflicts between these two companies. One of the more recent guarantors that this conflict will not end anytime soon is the November 2025 jury finding that Apple infringed Masimo’s ’776 patent, yielding a damages award of more than $630 million. As the saying goes, stay tuned.
Health Canada downgrades risk classifications for COVID tests
Now that the SARS-CoV-2 virus is essentially endemic to the human population, government agencies are treating COVID-19 like a more or less routine communicable disease. To that end, Health Canada (HC) has reclassified several related test types from the highest risk classification to lower risk categories.
HC noted that it had treated all tests for the virus as class IV tests in the first years of the pandemic, due in no small part to the attendant public health considerations. Going forward, however, the agency intends to shift lab-based testing devices to class II, a low-to-medium risk category. Point-of-care and self-testing devices will be downgraded to class III, the medium-to-high risk designation under Canada’s four-tier risk scheme.
The agency states that the sponsors of existing marketing authorizations needn’t do anything in response, which also applies to those with applications pending. HC said, however, that it will contact entities with pending marketing authorization applications about the changes, but offered no details.
So that’s the roundup to start this fourth week of March 2026. And if you’re still feeling nostalgic for 2025, you can always tune in to Stanley Clarke’s cover of Janet Jackson’s Funny How Time Flies (When You’re Having Fun). One problem, though: Clarke recorded this in 1988, but hey, who’s counting?
