By Kirell Lakhman

Scott Brown's victory in Massachusetts last night could be the beginning of the end of President Obama's goal of overhauling the nation's health-care system, but it won't erase the gains the clinical lab industry could see if it were to pass.

It is a wincing irony that a candidate so outspoken against the bill has been elected to replace the Senator who had been its greatest supporter, and whose election now threatens its survival.

The New York Times this morning reports that the prospect of passing the health-care overhaul by pushing the Senate plan through the House appeared to significantly diminish," meaning that Senators must now choose between taking the bill back to tweak it in hopes of making it more palatable for the House, or killing it.

Last summer, before the Senate passed its version of the bill, Bloomberg News wrote that clinical labs could become "potential winners" if the Senate's version clears the House.

Citing an analyst, the story said the bill would create armies of new patients “hungry for health care” that “in the medium- and long-term this will be a win for the entire industry."

Of course, faced with its two options, the Senate could choose the first, which would almost certainly enable it to retain provisions that would realize this prediction. But even if it doesn't clinical labs still face a significant increase in demand in coming years as the American population continues to age.

After all, the number of people in the US without health insurance — around 23.6 million, according to a Cato Institute report from last summer — is eclipsed by the number of Baby Boomers expected to reach retirement in coming years, who themselves will be voracious health-care consumers under Medicare. According to the US Census, in 2008 there were around 38.4 million Americans aged 65 and older, while ACLA predicts there will be 192 million of them in coming years.

As ACLA has said, "[t]his demographic shift [of Baby Boomers] will focus more attention on preventable diseases associated with an aging population, including cancer, stroke, diabetes, hypertension and cardiovascular disease" — which in turn places a greater emphasis on screening and testing, including molecular testing.

Moreover, the recently enacted Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act now allows Medicare recipients to be reimbursed for diabetes and cardiovascular disease screening tests. "Clinical laboratory services will play a vital role in these screening and prevention efforts, which will result in health benefits for Medicare beneficiaries and a healthier financial outlook for the Medicare program," according to ACLA.

Among the labs' biggest challenges will continue to be hiring enough techs to serve that surge in demand. I don't expect to see any relief from Washington on this end.