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Biotech / Medical : IMAT - ultrafast tomography for coronary artery disease -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: art slott who wrote (2908)	2/3/1999 10:58:00 AM
From: Bruce Rozenblit	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3725

I'll see if I can get myself in trouble again. I don't think medical effectiveness is the issue. Health care is the largest section of the economy at about 800 billion dollars. That's about 15% of the whole GDP! It is controlled by huge, gigantic corporations that have the money and clout to BUY legislation, monopolize services, throw their weight around and basically get whatever they want. Look at the state of affairs and how its changed over the last 10 years. They got what they wanted. These institutions are businesses and the only thing business cares about is making money. If any faction of the health care industry thinks EBT technology will cost them profits, they will try to crush it. I'm sorry dear Doctor, but professional organizations of physicians most definitely are concerned about the fee base of their members and will resist new technology that reduces fee base. That's human nature. These are the same people that pass judgement on the effectiveness of the new technology. This is the age old conflict between market forces and patient benefit. I cite the proliferation of cosmetic surgery and liposuction as as example. Once again Imatron set this problem up by establishing a market price for the service with HeartScan. If they would have stayed out of the service end, then the Cardiologists could charge and use the machine any way they wanted to and get more fee. If they want their precious treadmill tests, then they could use EBT as a convenient first screen, and then use treadmill or other more traditional procedures as a follow up. Another usage would be to have the family doc's use the scanner to feed people to the cardiologist, thereby generating more business for them. If a system of usage was developed that would generate more business for the cardiologists, I'm sure they would all be rallying around this technology. Now, a large faction views it as competition for fee, hence the resistance.