The Medical/Auto tie in

I had no idea that the medical business might be effected by the demise, or even the endangerment, of the automobile industry in America, but here is what one of Matt Yglesias' readers had to say in which Yglesias commented on the auto business:

“by which hundreds of thousands of jobs are now hanging isn’t very funny”

It’s not funny. I’m the medical industry, and we’re doing fine. You will always pay for medical treatment, even if you just lost your job. But many of our suppliers are tied to the auto industry. Few suppliers want to commit to the medical industry because of the high risk. What if the FDA decides you product is no good? Even worse, what if you get sued in faulty product litigation? For those reasons, our suppliers like to have some reliable auto business to keep them safe. But they sunk a lot of money into the machines needed to supply the auto industry. So what happens when those machines aren’t running? Well, they need to make up the costs by raising the price of my products. And we in the medical industry don’t take losses. We transfer the costs to you, because you’ll pay for your medical needs no matter what it costs. Are you laughing now? Didn’t think so. People rightly talk about how suppliers will be affected, but they don’t even know how far it goes.

Learn something new every day. Does anyone else out there know anything about this?