A New Strain On the Cost Of Health Care; Latest Medical Devices Bring Bigger Bills
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Managed health care plans and the Medicare program have had some success slowing growth in spending for doctors, hospitals and home care agencies. But managed care has been much less successful reining in spending on new life-enhancing medical devices and procedures. Advances in technology — from laser treatments to the latest surgical procedures with miniature instruments — are one of the main reasons for the reacceleration in the overall costs of health insurance, after several years of slow or zero growth. Sales of new medical devices in the United States rose 30 percent over the last five years, outpacing the 22 percent rise over all in health care spending and all other categories except prescription drug sales, which were up 50 percent. ”About half the growth in real per-capita health costs is associated with medical technology” including advances in procedures and drugs, said Mark Freeland, deputy director of the National Health Statistics Group in the Health Care Financing Administration. Increased medical costs were cited yesterday by Humana Inc., a managed care company with 6.2 million members, as it announced that its first-quarter earnings would fall below Wall Street’s expectations. More : query.nytimes.com |