How to Hold Down Health Care Costs

I read an interesting article today about medical practices and technology. Increasingly, advanced diagnostic technology and other technology such as electronic medical records and electronic transmission of prescriptions to pharmacies are becoming commonplace in all sorts of medical practices, including your family physician's office.

Of course, these technologies cost money.

And there's the rub. We all want the best medical care that modern medicine, including modern medical technology, can offer. We don't want to compromise. If a new diagnostic tool comes out that can detect a heart problem or a vascular issue, or a metabolic problem or a cancer just a little bit sooner and a little bit more accurately, I want that new technology. It might save my life.

But we have to hold down health care costs. That's what Obama keeps telling us. They're going cut reimbursements to doctors and limit the costs of testing. That means that doctors won't be able to afford to keep up with new technologies. And if doctors can't afford to buy the new technologies, the companies that do research and development to produce these new technologies won't be able to sell them. Therefore, they won't be able to afford to develop and produce them.

And so the "trickle down" goes.

But we don't care about that, do we? We just want to be able to insure that extra 47 million people; many of whom have chosen not to have health care because they don't need it, many others who are already eligible for other types of health care benefits but haven't signed up, many others who are illegal aliens.

No, none of that matters. We have to lower the cost of health care. So let's roll back the technology to what it was years ago. Let's stop developing new treatments, new drugs, new diagnostic tools, new technologies. Because these are the things that drive up the cost of health care.

Of course, we'll all die sooner and we'll have a decreased quality of life as we develop diseases that rob us of our health. But we'll all be covered by universal, government-run, rationed health care.

And that's what really matters.