“CMS’ goal here is to cut down on the number of procedures. The same device has been approved in Europe for almost 5 years and has gained widespread use by patients who want to forgo very invasive open-heart surgeries—for good reason. The minimally invasive approach poses a lot less hardship on patients. This ruling will force people to get open-heart surgeries that might have been avoidable. These decisions used to be left to patients and doctors. Now it’s clear that for costly procedures, Washington will be making more of these choices for us.”