Behind rising health-care costs
What's driving the increase in medical costs -- an increase that, in terms of hospital spending, is roughly twice the rate of inflation? An increase in chronic (and largely preventable) diseases such as adult-onset diabetes? That's part of it. The aging Boomer population? That's part of it, although nowhere near as big a part as most people think, writes blogger and former financial journalist Maggie Mahar. One big driver is the demand for the new -- new tests, new procedures, and, especially, new -- and quite expensive -- equipment:
As Paul Ginsburg, President of the Center for Studying Health Systems Change, explained in the January/February issue of Health Affairs: “hospitals have been increasing capacity, not predominantly by adding new beds but by expanding specialized facilities (such as operating rooms and imaging facilities) needed to serve patients with the latest technology.”Consider, for example, what may be the world's most expensive medical device: a particle accelerator with a total price tag well over $100 million. The machine, which employs protons to bombard cancerous tumors, can deliver higher and more precise doses of radiation, and we have evidence that it is effective in treating certain rare cancers.
But we don’t know whether it offers any benefits when it comes to treating common cancers."That's far from established, and there's a good deal of controversy about it," said J. Frank Wilson, a professor of radiation oncology at the Medical College of Wisconsin recently told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Nevertheless, roughly a dozen proton therapy centers have been proposed throughout the country ...
If a new and expensive procedure or piece of equipment will do things we've previously been unable to do in health care, but have needed to, that's one thing. But when it offers no clear improvement over existing procedures/technology ... well, perhaps that's something we need to look harder at. And the proton accelerator is just one example.