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04 July 2009 10:53 PM

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ASPEN PANEL: What Drives Up the Cost of Health Care?

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Tes

The technologies that are geared toward use by doctors are more expensive in many cases because they promote a closed system that charges large fees for doing tasks that the technology itself performs rather than the doctors who have elected themselves to be the only people pressing the buttons given that they have a strong lobby has looks out for their interests.

The skin related procedures can be noted as examples, hair removal, skin resurfacing, mole removal, acne treatment, hair transplant are all procedures that technicians can perform easily through use of lasers and yet in many regions these activities are made to exclusively be performed by doctors. The excessive fees encourage more expensive technologies which are geared to grab a share of the fee crop because it’s the technology that is delivering the actual treatment and not those that presses the buttons.

Finding other services that technology simplifies as cash crops in other medicals fields has been as tempting, many doctors and not just plastic make a living by just injecting wrinkle drugs. These physicians run away from various real medical fields to do these tasks and tempt other doctors to find a cash crop procedure.

MRIs are becoming even more sophisticated and of course those that press the buttons charge enormous fees for doing these tests. In time these technologies will detect disease by themselves and the fees would be collected by those who would be pressing the buttons.

Many of the surgery related technologies have come done in prices but the fees for surgeries have escalated regardless. Fees for minor surgeries are becoming massive and the costs of technology component are minor in most cases. These include dental implants, Lapband type devices. The exception is in the field of cataract surgery where both the surgery and the devices have come down in prices.

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