Technology Aging Population

Impact of Technology and the Aging Population on Health Cost

Introduction

The social consequences of population aging, the increasing share of older people in the population, and the new technology for health care are the subjects of the broad and profound debate in many dissimilar fields. In health economics, the focus has been mostly on the consequence of population ageing on the growth of health costs. It seems quite evident that the relationship amongst age and health costs depends on the health of the individual. As a person ages, their health decreases in general and this successively leads to increasing usage of health care services. While all economists value the contribution of such economic growth to the well-being of the people,

These medical innovations include new surgical procedures, biologic agents for creating drugs, and medical devices and new support systems such as implantable defibrillators, CT Scanners, transmission of information and electronic medical history. There is very little in the area of medicine that does not use some type of medical technology and that has not been affected by new technology. Researchers agree that technological advances in medicine contributes to rising overall health care spending while a specific new technology may either decrease or increase a person’s health care spending. The development of new treatments for the untreatable diseases will lead to the improvement of the health of the people, especially the ones suffering from terminal conditions. However, there is no denying that the more developed and high technology is used for treatment, the more it will cost the person who is utilizing it. The way to determine if a specific new technology can reduce or increase the total health care expenditures actually depends on many factors. An example of this is the technology’s effect on the cost of handling an individual patient. The effectiveness of a new technology in medicine involves not only the decrease in total health costs but rather, the change should be evaluated by its result, whether it is higher or lower spending for each patient

Many people concern that, even if these enhanced technologies succeed, they will not gain because it will be unaffordable and it is a waste of money if it has too high a cost. While we have to take new ways to deal with the problem of healthcare affordability, we have to do it cautiously. This issue must be addressed in a way that will not endanger the tremendous possibility for economic benefits from upholding medical innovation that have made it through a longer and more costly growth process.

Particularly, there is concern regarding the menaces to innovation because converting ideas from insights in the biomedical research lab sciences into secure and efficient products for treatments has become more costly. Acquiring a product into general usage is a progressively costly and lengthy business with substantial risk. Too frequently, the process is irregular, and may take a long time of hard work and high costs for product