One of the core prerequisites of Post-Partisan democracy is an informed citizenry. In the Post-Partisan way of thinking, citizens are responsible not just to vote, but to partner with their government in thinking about the issues and decisions the nation faces (and utilize collaborative technologies to aggregate, share, and refine the resulting insights).

In that spirit, The Costs and Value of New Medical Technologies: Symposium Summary is a particularly informative and concise outlook on the future of American healthcare from a recent symposium sponsored by the Center for the Study of Innovation and Productivity and held at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco on May 25, 2007.

Salient excerpts:

Health care is among the most technologically advanced sectors, and it also constitutes a large and growing share of the U.S. economy. Between 1960 and 2005, the share of health-care spending in U.S. gross domestic product more than tripled, growing from 5.2% to 16%; this growth is likely to continue, with health care conceivably expanding to encompass up to one-third of national output by the year 2050 (Jones 2005).

The exclusion of cost considerations likely has contributed to rapid increases in U.S. health-care costs. Garber therefore recommends the use of “cost-conscious coverage” policies, whereby health interventions are evaluated in terms of their relative cost effectiveness in addition to their impact on medical outcomes.

Several key points surfaced in a summary discussion:

Among the common themes identified by the presenters, it seems clear that advances in medical technology have generated large benefits relative to their costs in the United States in recent decades. However, incentive structures within the U.S. private and public systems for health-care delivery are not always ideal: market power among providers sometimes offsets consumer gains from new procedures, and cost control generally is not rewarded. Achieving greater cost control will be technically and politically challenging because it is likely to entail some degree of rationing in the supply of health-care services, but explicitly making such trade-offs may be necessary to ensure the spread of beneficial medical technologies to the widest possible population.