Had I waited for the cost of a CT screening to come down, chosen the cheaper X-Ray alternative or just done nothing in the hope that I could save enough money to afford the scan, I would have been dead long before the free market got around to accommodating my personal budgetary issues.
"Something like 2% of cancers down the road will come from CT scans now, " says Columbia University radiation biologist Eric Hall, who was not involved in the current study.
Doctors, hospitals, surgeons and specialists providing critical care to the elderly such as surgery for hip and knee replacements, sophisticated diagnostics through MRIs and CT scans, and even treatment for cancer and heart disease will shut down and disappear in much of the country, and others would stop serving Medicare patients.