The Integrative Stream

Procedure Price Escalation

And as I continue this morning’s round of the medical blogs, Kevin, M.D., discusses the decline of the physical exam in favor of more clinically clear-cut diagnostics. Lawsuit survivability is a big part of this, and it’s certainly affecting health care costs. Comments on the post vary from interesting to fairly simplistic.

Earlier this week I was at a talk given by Harvard’s David Cutler, focusing on the relative importance of medicine in healthcare. The topic sounds a little odd, but it’s if you think about it, it’s not: only in the last thirty to fifty years have medical advances been the main driver of increased life expectancies. They played a role prior to that, but public health and rising economic conditions played a much larger one. Sewers were, perhaps, the statins of their day. And when you look at things in this context, those extra years of life expectancy are getting a lot more expensive.