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What's great about consumer health technology is that the market and scale allows the tech to become much cheaper. I've had Holter monitors where the non-return fee (price of the device) is $3,000. But you can get an EKG device, though less extensive than a Holter recording, now for about $40 and use an app to get a board-certified cardiologist to interpret the results for $12 (AliveCor). The AliveCor app has an algorithm that is FDA approved to recognize a-fib at no cost to the patient. Qardio is coming out with an ambulatory EKG model that has FDA approval soon. And think about the boon that glucometers have been. And prior to people commonly owning their own blood pressure machines, the measurements taken at a doctor's office every couple of years were not nearly as informative as regular readings in various environments. You can now even buy an AED from Costco for $1,000.

I had bradycardia a few weeks ago on a weekend and was able to take my EKG at home on a device I purchased for $40. I was able to send a PDF of the read out to my cardiologist by e-mail, and he was able to interpret it immediately. He tested it later in his office with his own EKG machine and was amazed at the accuracy. It's only one-lead, but very accurate for what it does.

I think that Theranos company mentioned is great. It costs so much to see a doctor without insurance and if you can get a test for something you suspect is affecting you, why not? Getting your cholesterol checked or Vitamin D levels evaluated can be very good health choices for people who can't afford to see a doctor. And even if they could afford to see a doctor, it's not as if most doctors don't acquiesce to the testing patients want anyway.

To me this seems very democratic. This seems to be what Americans have been clamoring for--market-based healthcare.

To argue that the government should step in and protect a certain class of labor as the only legitimate providers of healthcare seems rather antithetical to what Americans claim to have wanted for decades.

Having said that, doctors and other healthcare professionals are necessary, and I think our state-based systems continue to be a mess. While the exchanges are more reasonably priced than what we had before, the system is far too complicated still, too fractured by state, and it leaves way too many out.

I'm in Virginia and had our governor not opened his mouth on gun control the week before this last election we might have tipped the balance for democrats in the state senate and been able to expand medicaid. I read a fascinating article about a man in Kentucky who is clearly benefitting from Medicaid expansion and voted against it:

http://ift.tt/1RbZDgX

Blackburn was making small payments on an MRI he’d gotten at Pikeville Medical Center, the only hospital in a 150-mile radius, when he heard about Big Sandy’s Shelby Valley Clinic. There he met Fleming, who helped him sign up for one of the managed-care Medicaid plans available in Kentucky.

On Election Day, Blackburn voted for Bevin [the governor elect who has promised to dismantle Medicaid expansion] because he is tired of career politicians and thought a businessman would be more apt to create the jobs that Pike County so needs. Yet when it comes to the state’s expansion of health insurance, “it doesn’t look to me as if he understands,” Blackburn said. “Without this little bit of help these people are giving me, I could probably die. . . . It’s not right to not understand something but want to stamp it out.”
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This is a part of my fellow Americans I really, really don't understand. This guy voted for a man on the promise he would take away his health insurance.

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