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Journal of Community Health
Published in: Journal of Community Health 4/2009

01-08-2009 | Original Paper

Opportunities for the Cost Reduction of Medical Care

Authors: Monte Malach, W. J. Baumol

Published in: Journal of Community Health | Issue 4/2009

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Abstract

The explosion of medical knowledge has deluged the medical community with a plethora of new medicines, new tests, and new procedures. This creates a serious need to carefully evaluate the definable benefits from these new developments, which promise to increase the quality of medical care beyond older, established, and usually less-costly methods. In addition, more recent information has clearly identified genetic variation in an individual’s response to medications. As such, conventional wisdom may now prove to be wrong or subject to question. Examples of this, which we present, include situations where medication may more safely provide benefits to asymptomatic, stable patients than surgical interventions with high potential for complications that counteract predicted benefits. We argue that preventive medicine offers an unusual and comprehensive promise of disease prevention and treatment. The issues we cite may be effective in the future cost reduction of medical care.
Footnotes
1
Indeed, the ultimate high mortality from arteriosclerosis is not new knowledge. The accumulation of lipids and inflammatory cells in the walls of arteries is not newly discovered (see Anitchvov in his classic paper in 1913 followed reports by Marchand in 1904 and Ignatawsky and Neudauss in 1905 connected the relation of cholesterol to obstructive atherosclerotic vascular disease. An editorial in 1958 in the Annals of Internal Medicine by William Dock likened Anitchvov’s work as a classic discovery comparable to that of the tubercle bacillus by Koch and Harvey on the circulation [11, 12].
 
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Metadata
Title
Opportunities for the Cost Reduction of Medical Care
Authors
Monte Malach
W. J. Baumol
Publication date
01-08-2009
Publisher
Springer US
Published in
Journal of Community Health / Issue 4/2009
Print ISSN: 0094-5145
Electronic ISSN: 1573-3610
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10900-009-9155-7

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