High-Tech Medicine and Rising Health Care Costs

Abstract

Increasingly, high technology medicine (HTM) is blamed for rising health costs in the United States. Ginzberg looks at the role HTM plays and, in his opinion, will continue to play in American medicine. He offers an operative definition of HTM and examines what he sees as fallacious arguments for the claim that HTM not only is very expensive, but that it often is used inappropriately, particularly in the care of handicapped newborns, comatose patients, and the aged. Ginzberg offers counterpropositions for these arguments, reviews the role of public policy in fostering the growth of HTM, and concludes with some forecasts about HTM and future health care costs in the United States. (KIE abstract)