Hospitals, drugs and biomedical technology are meant to cure patients in physical and mental distress. However, commercialization of new therapies meant to cure the diseased will cause impoverishment of patients and their families. This has become more evident in recent years where new and advanced technology have become money machines in the hands of hospitals for whom earning higher revenue occupies a premier position than curing patients.
Hospitals in the US have entered a new race to increase their profitability by equipping medical centers with nuclear particle accelerators to treat cancer tumours. The advantage of applying proton particles in radiotherapy is that unlike high energy electromagnetic X-rays they are more target oriented and do not pass through the unwanted parts of the body. Doctors claim that there are fewer side effects of proton therapy. The pros of proton therapy are outweighed by the cons of the unusual high costs involved in building a nuclear particle accelerator. It takes approximately $100 million covering a huge area – the size of a football field to set up the machines.
The cost of setting up an accelerator would mean that the hospitals would force oncologists to force more and more patients into taking proton radiation therapy to extricate the amount of money the authorities have spend in setting up the accelerator and reaping as much profit as possible for running and maintaining the machines. Patients who are rich enough to bear the cost of the treatment will be able to get it while the less fortunate ones will be shown the door.
The cheap and more effective therapies will be kept away from the patients. US citizens will now be required to pay heavy premium on health insurance if they want to avail this expensive radiation therapy in future. Overuse of new technology is adding to the already soaring medical expenditure.
With increasing income disparities, commercialization of new medical technology will only aggravate it. Thus rich from now will only have the right to get the treatment whereas the poor will languish.
Source: New York Times