Instrumental and Transformative Medical Technologies

This Article considers how medical technologies impact universality in health care. The universality principle, as embodied in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (A CA), eliminated widespread discriminatory practices and provided financial assistance to those otherwise unable to become insured a democratizing federal act that was intended to stabilize health care policy nationwide. This Article posits that medical technology, as with all of medicine, can be universalizing or exclusionary and that this status roughly correlates to its being instrumental technology or transformative technology. Instrumental technology acts as a tool of medicine and often serves an existing aspect of health care; in contrast, transformative technology is pioneering, meaning it creates a new form of care or otherwise is novel. Instrumental and transformative medical technologies provide end points on a continuum, which provides a lens through which to examine whether medical technology has greater potential to facilitate universality or exclusion. The Article first examines where technologies fit on the instrumental-transformative continuum and then considers measures more specific to universality, namely improving the quality of medical care, access to care, or the cost of care. These considerations help to pinpoint the moment at which a technology may have a universalizing effect, if at all. The Article concludes with preliminary thoughts regarding whether the instrumental-transformative continuum helps to determine whether certain technologies should be adopted or supported publically or allowed to develop (or fail) organically.