Kosali Simon, PhD, M.A., highlights the financial strain of energy-intensive medical devices on low-income patients.
Transcript:
It may not be surprising that those who are very reliant on medical devices that require a lot of energy may also be people who do not have very high budgets. Because we know health and wealth generally end up being correlated, people whose health is very compromised tend not to be the people who are earning a lot of money. When you look at people who are reliant on machines — think about home dialysis — you might think, “Well, electricity consumption, you’re just plugging in an item.” But when we look at these numbers, depending on the state you’re in, it could be a substantial cost.
Dr. Simon emphasizes the overlooked energy costs of medical devices and urges research on their impact.
Transcript:
While it might not seem like a big issue for the average person, among people whose health really requires them to have these specialized machines, it could end up being a pretty high burden, and it’s a burden that we do not think of and insure. We think of covering the costs of the machine, but we don’t throw in the cost of running it. I think that the next steps would be to actually look at real-world data on who are the people using these. What sort of settings are they in? How important is energy security to people who end up having to use a medical device for health often or every day? Even those things are just trying to grapple with the size of the problem. Should we be thinking about this?
