Managing The Medical Arms Race: Innovation And Public Policy In The Medical Device Industry

Managing The Medical Arms Race: Innovation And Public Policy In The Medical Device Industry
by Susan Bartlett Foote

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Book Description
The allure of medical innovation is powerful--it holds out the promise of perfect health, the end of pain, the deferral of death. Our insatiable appetite for costly new technologies, fed by a profusion of innovations and the profits they generate, has led to what has been dubbed the medical arms race. During the last several decades government has been called upon to manage the escalation of this race.
Foote has written the first comprehensive examination of the profound influence of government policies on medical innovation. She explains how these policies have proliferated to affect every stage of the innovative process in medical device technology--from the first research idea to the patient's bedside. Drawing on case studies of technologies as diverse as lasers, cardiac pacemakers, CT scanners, and IUDs, she traces the interaction between the industry and government institutions, including the National Institutes of Health, the FDA, and the Medicare and Medicaid programs.
Public policies during the 1950s and 1960s, Foote discovers, tended to promote innovation, while the regulation and cost controls of the 1970s and 1980s began to inhibit it. For the 1990s and beyond she proposes incremental policy improvements that will rationalize and streamline government intervention. She cautions that we must recognize the limits of medical technology and public policy to cure all ills.
Medical innovation is a crucial part of health care reform, a subject of increasing complexity and controversy. Written clearly and accessibly, Managing the Medical Arms Race is an invaluable source for medical, industry, and policy professionals, but it also has much to say to anybody concerned with how we as a society choose to take care of our health.

From the Inside Flap
"Foote's comprehensive review of the conflicting public policies confronting the medical device industry is must reading for everyone involved in the effort to harness the cost of American medicine while guaranteeing the value of quality invention. It's up to those of us in the midst of health care reform to accept her policy challenge."--Senator Dave Durenberger

"Invaluable insights for health care policy decision makers about the opportunities and dilemmas created by medical innovation."--Samuel O. Their, Brandeis University

"A brilliant analysis of a little understood area of health care and health policy in the United States."--Philip R. Lee, MD, UC San Francisco

From the Back Cover
"Foote's comprehensive review of the conflicting public policies confronting the medical device industry is must reading for everyone involved in the effort to harness the cost of American medicine while guaranteeing the value of quality invention. It's up to those of us in the midst of health care reform to accept her policy challenge." (Senator Dave Durenberger)

About the Author
Susan Bartlett Foote is Associate Professor at the Walter A. Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley.

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