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Even comparing the costs of health-care solutions gets into dicey political ground­—echoes of “rationing” and “death panels”—as well as larger ethical issues. Virginia Rowthorn, an expert in global health law at the University of Maryland, gives the example of detecting cervical cancer with vinegar—a technique used in many developing countries. “If that technology were taken to an underserved area in the U.S., you can imagine the debate that would raise. Not only are we bringing in tech from a low-income country, now we’re using it with vulnerable populations in our society—it could be seen as another form of systematic discrimination against these groups.”

Many in the U.S. would object to the idea of people getting something they perceive to be less than the standard of care, even if the alternative is no access at all. (Because medical devices are rarely tested against each other, we don’t always know if cheaper technologies are more or less effective than expensive ones.) But this moral stance may simply be a fig leaf for another moral quandary. “In the U.S., we’ve tended to say cost is no object, but at the same time we’re comfortable with millions of people being uninsured,” Nancy Kass, a professor at Johns Hopkins University’s Berman Institute of Bioethics said. “We make our own tradeoffs here; we just don’t describe them the same way.” …

…continue reading ‘”Reverse Innovation” Could Save Lives. Why Aren’t We Embracing It?’

Thumb Image via New Yorker Illustration by Na Kim

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