Word: costs
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Both Kennedy's and Carter's plans make a desperate stab at trying to control the alarming rise in health costs. Carter's assumes passage of the hospital cost containment bill and it might also require that the fees charged by physicians be negotiated by the Secretary of HEW and a board composed of consumers, insurers and health care representatives. In essence, Kennedy advocates giving the Government veto power over payment scales worked out on a state basis through bargaining among the insured, the insurances, the doctors and hospitals...
...appeared on the medical scene. Combining X-ray equipment with a computer and a television cathode-ray tube, this revolutionary diagnostic device can visualize cross sections of the human body to detect, among other disorders, tumors, blood vessel damage and bile duct obstructions. But whereas an X-ray machine cost $50 in 1896, today's CAT scanner may run to $700,000 or more...
...become something of a whipping boy in the current cost-containment controversy, a symbol of the insanely soaring expenses of the U.S. medical care system. Government officials and consumers are questioning whether the benefits derived from the flood of innovative techniques of the past 20 years justify the high cost. Even physicians who traditionally have taken to the new technology with the enthusiasm of small boys trying out new toys, are voicing doubts...
...known as angina pectoris, or to heart attack and sudden death. In the operation doctors graft portions of a leg vein around the clogged part of the artery, thus creating a detour or bypass for the blood. Last year more than 80,000 such operations were performed. The average cost: $10,000 to $15,000. Despite its growing use, the procedure is highly controversial. Though it relieves patients from severe pain, there is. heated debate over whether it is better than less expensive and less risky medicinal treatments in prolonging life...
...money: about $25,000 a year in special centers, about half that if the treatment can be performed at home. Since 1973, the government has picked up the tab for dialysis (as well as for kidney transplant operations). The program now covers some 44,000 patients at an annual cost of more than $1 billion. By the 1980s the projection is 60,000 patients at an estimated cost exceeding $2 billion a year. Some observers wonder whether the program has been efficient. Even more important is the question of whether society can afford the program...