A former White House health care adviser struck back on Monday against Republican accusations that the health reform law will stifle innovation, calling some new devices "pseudo-innovation".
"We have benefited tremendously from medical innovations like MRI scanners, cardiac stents and powerful new drugs," Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, now at the University of Pennsylvania and the Center for American Progress, writes in the New York Times. ""But we need to stop glorifying every new technology as an innovation."
Emanuel, an oncologist who has worked at the National Institutes of Health, singled out a robotic surgical instrument called the da Vinci robot, saying it has never been shown to improve results of prostate surgery, despite heavy promotion. "...this is a pseudo-innovation -- a technology that increases costs without improving patients' health," wrote Emanuel, whose brother Rahm left the White House to become mayor of Chicago.
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