ABSTRACT
Pseudo-technology refers to developments that are used by medical science but that, in fact, have no scientific rationale for working. The importance of technology to the medical care system in the United States can be assessed in terms of the issues that have been generated by its rapid progress. Under retrospective payment systems, hospitals often could pay for new technology by billing third-party payers for the costs. Entrepreneurs, seeing the difficulty some hospitals were having in obtaining new technology, were able to borrow money to buy or lease the technology themselves and set up freestanding offices that offered the new service. Among the advances in medical technology with the greatest utility, imaging technologies have been developing at the most rapid pace. A physician or an institution that wanted to acquire a new technology could add the cost of the equipment to a research proposal to study the technology's clinical utility.
