Healthy heart scan

A cardiac CT scan for $79? It becomes much more expensive in the many cases of inconclusive results.

It’s easy to profit on the public’s fear of disease and lack of appreciation for false positives. The desire for the quick buck eclipses the concern for the overall cost of health care.

Somehow, I don’t think these entrepreneurs care much.

Comments

Anonymous
Kevin,
Why should they care much? They are selling a product that people apparently want. Do the people who sell GPS equipment for cars care much that maps are still cheaper and easy to use? Should they? Of course not.
If the person paying the bill wants a product or service, why is it a bad thing that they get it? If you think it’s useless, then tell them why. But whining about “the overall cost of health care” keeps pushing us toward universal healthcare because instead of viewing this as you providing a service for a fee, you see your industry as a monolith. Monoliths get taken over by the government.
Is that really what you want?
PharmacistMike
One issue is the risk for malignancies due to unnecessary CT scans. How can the government allow companies to sell a product/service that can lead to cancer? Oh, never mind, I forgot, we still sell cigarettes.
Diora
Anon at 8:52: they are not “selling the product that people want”. They are using misleading and faulty advertising to convince uninformed people that they not only want but need this product. A little different don’t you think?
It amazes me how doctors justify this type of advertising – “oh this is what people want”. Lay people don’t read USPSTF or any other recommendations. Lay people don’t understand that tests aren’t risk free. Lay people have been listening to “just catch it early and it’ll save your life” pitches on TV and radio (and not only for recommended tests) for decades.
Drug ads have disclaimers. Why are these companies allowed to advertise their medical product using scare tactic and without disclaimers? Such as “the test has not been recommended for healthy people. The test has not been shown to save lives when done on healthy symptomles people. Doing this test may increase your risk of cancer by …”.
This is not about supply-demand. This is about misleading and fraudalent advertising that has a potential to harm.
Anonymous
“They are using misleading and faulty advertising to convince uninformed people that they not only want but need this product.”
Didn’t you just describe the advertising industry for virtually every product?
What is misleading about it? Are you saying that a CT scan has virtually no usefulness?
The Happy Hospitalist
you pay for the $79 scan out of pocket. Then when an “abnormality” arises, even a vague one, the far more expensive heart cath or biopsy in the case of CT screening is paid for out of our Medicare funds or health insurance pool which raises the cost for everyone. It’s not as simple as you spending your own money. You will eventually be spending my money, correct that, wasting my money for services you don’t need. A heart scan for everyone is no more appropriate than is the scare tactics used for carotid and AAA screening.
Anonymous
wait a minute — let’s think about false positives…if you are the one who gets a false positive, you should be pleased. On the other hand, not having a scan, you will get false negatives…that would be a bad thing because then you die.
It’s the people who paid for the scan and actually find something are the ones that are rightfully raving about this service.
If the medical establishment wants to deny care because it believes that it’s a false positive, you’re in the wrong business. Stop telling people what they should and should not pay for. If you don’t want the cadillac, don’t get one, but don’t go crying when your car gets totaled and you don’t have airbags…

Healthy heart scan

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