NY Times: Even Small Medical Advances Can Mean Big Jumps in Bills

[LiberalElite]

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/06/health/even-small-medical-advances-can-mean-big-jumps-in-bills.html?emc=edit_th_20140406&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=46529169&_r=0

MEMPHIS — Catherine Hayley is saving up for an important purchase: an updated version of the tiny digital pump at her waist that delivers lifesaving insulin under her skin.

Such devices, which tailor insulin dosing more precisely to the body’s needs, have transformed the lives of people with Type 1 diabetes like Ms. Hayley. But as diabetics live longer, healthier lives and worries fade about dreaded complications like heart attacks, kidney failure, amputations and blindness, they have been replaced by another preoccupation: soaring treatment costs.

[frazzled]

1. And this is why we need the medical device tax

Not only to help fund the ACA, but to keep health care costs down. Yet the Republicans, together with Minnesota and Massachusetts (thanks, Al and Elizabeth) are still trying to repeal it.

Not only can the medical-device industry easily afford the tax without compromising innovation, but the industry’s enormous profits are a result of anticompetitive practices that themselves drive up medical-device costs unnecessarily. The tax is a distraction from reforms to the industry that are urgently needed to lower health care costs.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/17/opinion/the-myth-of-the-medical-device-tax.html

Profits to the medical device and the pharmaceutical industries are enormous. This has to end, and we know how to do it: get rid of anticompetitive practices that prevent hospitals (and/or insurers) from getting the best prices, lump-sum bundling for certain procedures, and outcome-based research to evaluate effectiveness.

As a side note, there's one device that never gets any attention and is, in general, equally or more expensive than the insulin pump mentioned in the article. And it they are almost NEVER, EVER covered by insurance: hearing aids. Our daughter has had a moderate to severe bilateral sensorineural hearing loss since infancy, and wears two hearing aids. These were expensive for us thirty years ago (six or seven hundred dollars each way back then), but today, an advanced digital hearing aid necessary for this type of condition runs into the thousands. In her mid-to-late twenties, we had to help our daughter get a new pair that she needed. A low to mid priced pair that worked for her cost $8,600. Even though she had good employer-based insurance, not a penny was covered (though associated medical and audiologic visits were).

I hope we can get the cost of hearing aids partially covered under the ACA. Especially for children, this is critical: it can affect their early interactions with the world and thus their entire future.

[LiberalElite]

2. I wear hearing aids too -

Not covered by insurance but I got a discount through employer. Still outrageously expensive and for no good reason.