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AS THIS ISSUE of Health Affairs goes to press, policymakers are grappling with ways to stem a global financial meltdown. Many people deeply immersed in health care or health policy are watching from the sidelines with a mixture of amazement, relief, trepidation, and fear:
* Amazement that the debacle in financial services actually makes the health sector look healthy by comparison.
* Relief that the financial wizards who invented financial market derivatives, collateralized mortgage obligations, and creditdefault swaps did not also invent health care derivatives, "collateralized health obligations," or health savings account default swaps.
* Trepidation that the daisy chain of subprime mortgage lending that laid the groundwork for the financial meltdown bears certain similarities to what's happening in health care.
* And fear that even if current health system trends don't trigger a financial meltdown, an equally traumatic adjustment may still lie ahead.
Besides the headlines, what kindles such thoughts is reading the papers in this Health Affairs thematic issue on medical technology, funded by the Blue Shield of California Foundation, Medtronic, and Johnson and Johnson....