>>>So yet, lots of innovation....BUT
>
>You're talking about US healthcare administration which is unique in the First World and is a significant contributor to increased cost. I'm thinking more about healthcare innovation. There is significant improvement even in something you might imagine is generic, such as bone cement. Robotic surgery is changing shapes of implants in ways that a human surgeon could not reliably deploy. Radioactive beads are injected straight to a tumor to avoid surgery or blunderbus irradiation. Catheters are passed from your groin to your coronary vessels to insert a stent so you can go home the next day. Major surgery performed through keyholes to minimize risk and hospital stay. And so it goes on. All of these things reduce personal and financial cost of what used to be major surgery. I'm old enough to remember the days when surgery was the only way to distinguish appendicitis from an ovarian tumor from mesenteric adenitis and we performed open surgery on the off chance: today the surgeon knows with high certainty whether it really is appendicitis and if she does operate, it will be through an endoscope. The first appendectomy I performed in the night turned out to be an ovarian teratoma the size of an orange with hair and teeth. Could not be surprised that way in 2014. Etc, etc, etc...

The advances in medicine in my lifetime are nothing short of astounding. Some years back, I had an MRI for neck pain. When the results came in, the doctor was astonished because they showed something then known as a "Chiari malformation." Because these were known only in children with spina bifida, I was sent to see a pediatric neurologist. (I was already married with kids at the time.) In the years since, they've learned that these are actually not so uncommon. With imaging, they see them in plenty of adults. (In fact, my father was later found to have one.)

Tamar