Technology is something most of us embrace because of the potential of improving our quality of life. Whether it’s everyday necessities or just leisure activity, the march of technology has so much to offer. And though we don’t have jet packs or flying cars, when technology moves forward, it feels more like “the future”, doesn’t it?
But everything comes at a price, and yes, that includes technology. Take mobile phones, for instance. Before smart phones came along, you could just pick up your basic mobile phone and a simple calling plan, and that was that. However, in the smart phone and wireless Internet era, you have these expensive marvels that do everything but file your taxes and walk your dog. And as if that’s not enough, there’s nice new expensive data and texting plans to take advantage of.
Technological advances bring improved medical treatments, along with a big price tag.
Yes, technology costs. And nowhere is this more obvious than in the healthcare industry. Just what do all of these new advanced (and expensive!) mean for health insurance? Read on …
Technology Progress Comes At A Price
According to the Hastings Center, a non-profit research institution, not only are health care costs rising at an annual rate of about 7% a year, but new and increased use of medical technology contributes to between 40 and 50 percent of that annual increase.
Is it any wonder that health insurance premiums are likely to rise in 2015? Americans love technology, and the more cutting edge, the better, with an implicit hope that the latest and greatest advances will overcome a disease or condition that up until now was incurable.
And that hope is not altogether unjustified. Advances in medical technology have resulted in better vaccines, more effective surgical procedures, and better treatments of cancer. In the early 60’s for instance, a woman who was told that she had breast cancer was pretty much being given a death sentence. Nowadays, there’s more of a fighting chance, and the possibility of leading a full, normal life. There’s no doubt that medical technology improves lives.
But medical technology is expensive, and doctors are expected to avail themselves of as much of it as is possible. All of these innovations help a person to live longer, which means people need to be insured longer, and of course, requiring more technological intervention to sustain life, which means yet more expense, and so on.
The forecast? Medicare’s in trouble and insurance rates will continue to rise to compensate for the increased expenses involved in keeping people alive longer.
What Can Be Done?
Obviously, no one’s calling for the withholding of care for people who are sick (remember all of that foolish talk about death panels when the Affordable Care Act was being debated?). This isn’t the grounds for some dystopian scenario where medical care is only for the well-off. But it’s quite clear that medical costs are rising, and the majority of people don’t seem too concerned about it.
There’s always the possibility that new medical advances, primarily diagnostic procedures and improved drugs, could catch and treat small problems before they get out of hand and require more expensive treatments down the road. That was the whole point behind HMOs when they first came on the scene.
But for such a thing to be a reality across the country, people need to be able to have access to health care that includes wellness visits and preventative check-ups. By making health maintenance available to all, problems can be caught in the early stage where treatments would be less involved, and consequently cheaper.
Another possibility, and it would be even tougher to pull this one off than for the above-mentioned cost-controlled universal health care system, is a sea change in how people and doctors view the role of technology in extending lifespans and maintaining quality of life. With our national hodgepodge of public and private health care, with procedures and treatment quality varying wildly from one region of the country to another, there’s no way that an oversight group can enforce a policy of cost-containment that would appeal to everyone.
If the picture looks bleak, it’s really not as bad as it seems. Preventative care is the most feasible and easily implemented solution, at least for the short term. Until there’s a change in the national outlook over the over-reliance on the biggest, most advanced, most costly new medical technology that comes down the pike, the preventative care pill may be our only treatment.