Advanced Technology and its Cost

. . but all the turn on does not lie with the manufacturers and the health cargon providers. We as longanimouss as well as play a role." Americans are accustomed to believing that much treatment is better treatment, yet in umpteen cases, a cost and benefits analysis will show that a patient is no better off for having sustained long-term, expensive treatment. Reagan quotes prof John Caronna of Cornel Medical Center as saying, "There's no way to shut it off. The doctors crave it, it's reassuring, and the patients crave it" (well-insured patients, presumably, who like to experience that their care is given in the latest style).

Because of advances in knowledge, engineering science has developed that permits new treatments in practically every aesculapian specialty--the replacement of joints in orthopedics; skin grafting in plastic surgery; heart transplants and coronary bypasses in pectoral surgery; kidney transplants and renal dialysis in nephrology; ear implants in rhinolaryngology; laser surgery in ophthalmology, and the list lengthens to include up to the minute sophisticated diagnostic tools such as magnetic resonance imaging and CAT scanners. There is seemingly no limit to the nub of money Americans want to spend on medical technologies.

The advancement of technology is one of the "blameless factors" in the assessment of procession health care costs; there are however, many sources of our current he

It is important to crystalize a perspective on what constitutes an expensive piece of equipment: what do we mean by "expensive?" Not only is the equipment inordinately costly, but the use and maintenance is expensive as well. Referred to as "the medical technology arms race" by a New York Times headline (April 29, 1991), the buildup of high tech equipment poses the last-ditch challenge for cost containment. Michael D. Reagan cites the article as an example of the considerable costs, or "expensive diffusion," involved. The article examines:

Computer data bases are networked, and selective information is shared over a vast area, locally and nationally, and now with talk of the "information superhighway," world-wide communication and sharing of information is becoming a reality. It is unlikely that this will happen in medical care unless we apply ceilings to rising costs on the state and/or national level.

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