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No. Affordable routine scans will result in massive overloading of the health system with unnecessary procedures, and the complications arising from those proc
by tisme 14y ago
No.
Affordable routine scans will result in massive overloading of the health system with unnecessary procedures, and the complications arising from those procedures will kill more people than would have died otherwise from whatever shows up on those scans.
There is no such thing as an intervention without risk, and that starts with the risks associated with general anaesthesia.
Scanning is one thing, interpreting a scan and deciding when and where to intervene is something that does not scale well at our current level of technology. Basically it needs a human to sit down and spend time analysing the scan to make sure that what is there warrants intervention. So even if the scan costs would drop to 0 you'd still have the component of the interpretation to deal with.
The end result of overloading the system like this is that those with symptoms that need care are less likely to receive it or receive it timely, and that those that didn't need the care will suffer from complications.
Knowing when to scan and when not to scan is a crucial ingredient in giving good care.
- lostlogin 14y agoBetter than what I said. And your last point flows into socializes versus privatized care quite quickly, where fear of litigation drives further testing, which creates a positive feedback loop. The more you test for the more you need to test for. In an exceptionally cynical view of private healthcare by S. Sheem, House of God, he says Rule 10: If you you don't take a temperature you can't find a fever. There are quite a few gems in there for those with a dark sense of humour.
- mdonahoe 14y agoOk. What if no one looks at the scans? What if I get scanned every month and no one looks at them until I start showing symptoms? My aunt got breast cancer recently. She got mammograms every year but the doctors never saw anything. Finally there was a mass discovered, and a when they went back to look at the old images, they could see it growing.