When health insurance companies are willing to pay for everything, doctors, hospitals, and urgent care centers have zero incentive to use less expensive methods.
The rejection of the anesthesiology robot is a perfect example of such unchecked spending. Anesthesiologists have a vitally important job: they keep you unconscious, pain free, and – most importantly – alive.
Enter Sedasys, the anesthesiologist robot that brings a $2,000 anesthesiology procedure down to just $200. The only problem is that nobody wants it. When hospitals can get their hands on $2,000 per procedure from an insurance company, why settle for $200?
Sedasys’ creator, Johnson & Johnson, will stop selling the robot due to poor sales. This incredible piece of machinery would have been able to administer accurate anesthesia for routine procedures and continue monitoring a patient’s vitals throughout the process.
A single nurse or clinician would have been able to operate the robot. The cost of hiring a trained professional for routine anesthesia would be eliminated, but the amount of money pulled in by facility would also decrease.
The Sedasys robot was approved by the FDA in 2013. But according to the Washington Post, it “was never welcomed by human anesthesiologists. Before it even hit the market, the American Society of Anesthesiologists campaigned against it, backing down only once the machine’s potential uses were limited to routine procedures such as colonoscopies.”
Many Americans avoid regular exams like colonoscopies because they are unaffordable. These procedures, however, are an important preventative measure when it comes to cancer and other diseases. Early diagnosis could mean the difference between life and death – and a whole lot of money.
Sedasys would not have put anesthesiologists out of work. What it would have done was make routine treatments far more affordable for those visiting clinics and community hospitals.
Editor’s note: We picked this as an example of how screwed up our health system and why prices can’t do anything but go up. When solutions like this are rejected so that hospitals and insurance companies will make more money, things need to change.
To Hell with Obamacare!
This book was written by Joe Gilbertson of the Punching Bag Post Staff. This is the solution to the Obamacare fiasco:
