The United States healthcare system is the most technologically advanced in the

Question

The United States healthcare system is the most technologically advanced in the world. Proponents of our technology consuming system argue that in the long run, technology reduces the cost of healthcare. Opponents, on the other hand, believe that technology will always increases costs simply because of operating costs, limited supply and demand, etc. After studying the relationship of technology and cost, choose whether you support the proponents or the opponents. Be sure to explain your answer.

Explanation / Answer

The relationship between healt care spending and technology is complex and conflicting .The impact of technology are cost differed ( exampel cancer drugs, invasive medical devices )may be tend to raise costs and have significant financial implications , while others may be cost neutral or cost savings.

The important question that underlies here is which of the the two ( cost raising or cost savings) dominates the other?

The health care spendings are going to raise the cost with the advancement in the technology. The simple reason for this is technology doesn't comes for free but diseases do. A simple demonstartion would explain it better . A person decides to choose the hospital or a doctor for treatment not only on basis of his skills but also on the cost to pay. Any treatment that involves the use of complicated equipments tends to be costlier.

There are n numbers of factors that has increased the total spendings on health care - the increase in life expectancy, growth in personal income,increasing hospital charges ,rising price of physicians and many more.

In a case study that was done by Scitovski , on 16 diseases , new technology reduced costs for 8 diseases , increased cost for 7 and was neutral for 1. The low tech technology may include X-rays , laboratory tests and high tech may include bypass surgery , modalities for breast cancer . The high tech technologies raises the cost on health while low tech has little impact. But the overall impact of cost lies in the fact of substitutability. The high tech technologies cannot be substituited by low tech . Contratry to it , for every low tech methods a high tech method can be invented and put to use .

Since people are becoming more health conscious and with their income increasing , the choose the high tech methods of treatment ,thereby raising cost on health.The appliocability of a method also plays a major role in raising the cost . Taking the example of magnetic resonance which was initially designed for specific organ disgnosis but with innovation and technology its diagnosis has spread to almost all organs raising the cost.

Although technological innovation is of great significance in healt care , it has been cliamed to be the key driver in raising the health costs.

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