Since technological improvements are the leading cause of the rise in health care costs, many wonder if it would be better to have 1990’s care at 1990’s prices or 2k care at 2k prices. Many agree that medical innovation is a direct result of our relatively laissez faire approach to medicine (and by this, I mean basically any other wisely designed system other than a single payer sytem would probably preserve health innovation).
This book, Your Money or Your Life by David Cutler, estimates that the benefits created by medical technology outweigh the costs by about 5:1. Slam dunk. Done.
Unfortunately, the desirability of preserving medical innovation is in no way settled by these figures. Even if the total benefits are greater than the total costs, we could still ask about the distribution of benefits and harms. Since rising prices affect the poor while usually the wealthier benefit from technological advance (but maybe in the long run everyone benefits) one could still argue in favor of 90’s tech at 90’s prices.
No comments:
Post a Comment