At SLHI’s The ‘R’ Word conference on September 25, the renowned health bioethicist, Art Caplan, noted that the first operation U.S. health care providers increasingly perform is a “wallet biopsy” to determine if the patient has the ability to pay for care or is adequately covered by insurance.

Exactly so. Even with the promise of health care reform, you can expect to see more wallet biopsies performed in the future. Raise your hand if the first question you get in the clinical experience is, “How are you going to pay for this?”