Taming the beloved beast : how medical technology costs are destroying our health care system / Daniel Callahan.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Callahan, Daniel, 1930-2019.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Medical care, Cost of--United States.

Medical care, Cost of.

Medical technology--Economic aspects--United States.

Medical technology.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (280 p.)

Edition:

Course Book

Place of Publication:

Princeton : Princeton University Press, c2009.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Technological innovation is deeply woven into the fabric of American culture, and is no less a basic feature of American health care. Medical technology saves lives and relieves suffering, and is enormously popular with the public, profitable for doctors, and a source of great wealth for industry. Yet its costs are rising at a dangerously unsustainable rate. The control of technology costs poses a terrible ethical and policy dilemma. How can we deny people what they may need to live and flourish? Yet is it not also harmful to let rising costs strangle our health care system, eventually harming everyone? In Taming the Beloved Beast, esteemed medical ethicist Daniel Callahan confronts this dilemma head-on. He argues that we can't escape it by organizational changes alone. Nothing less than a fundamental transformation of our thinking about health care is needed to achieve lasting and economically sustainable reform. The technology bubble, he contends, is beginning to burst. Callahan weighs the ethical arguments for and against limiting the use of medical technologies, and he argues that reining in health care costs requires us to change entrenched values about progress and technological innovation. Taming the Beloved Beast shows that the cost crisis is as great as that of the uninsured. Only a government-regulated universal health care system can offer the hope of managing technology and making it affordable for all.

Contents:

Frontmatter

CONTENTS

Preface

Introduction

CHAPTER 1. Medicare on the Ropes

CHAPTER 2. Taming the Beloved Beast: Medical Technology

CHAPTER 3. Getting Serious about Costs and Technology

CHAPTER 4. Competition: The Fix That Will Fail

CHAPTER 5. The Cohabitation of Medicine and Commerce

CHAPTER 6. "Medical Necessity"

CHAPTER 7. Redefining "Medical Necessity"

CHAPTER 8. Getting Out from Under: The Politics of Pain

Coda

Notes

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 08. Jul 2019)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9786612259326

9781282259324

1282259326

9781400830947

140083094X

OCLC:

438753765