More than inflation is pushing up costs of Medicare. While itÛªs true that doctors and hospitals are charging more, thereÛªs also the added cost of new treatments and services.</br></br>For example, take a new device that permits a doctor to monitor blood flow in the brain during open-heart surgery. For years, physicians have been able to keep track of brain waves through electroencephalographic monitoring (called EEGs). Now a company has developed an attachment for an EEG machine that puts brain wave information through a computer and displays it as a series of colored bar graphs on a television screen indicating what the situation is and what it was three minutes earlier.</br></br>The screen, placed near the operating table, gives the anesthetist an immediate benchmark to see if the patient is having a blood flow problem.</br></br>There is no doubt such a device can be helpful during an operation as complicated as open-heart surgery. But is it so necessary for a patient that the government ought to include it in the services that are paid for by Medicare? If itÛªs covered under the gover-ment program, it is certain it will be employed in every operation on a Medicare patient.</br></br>A new government bureau, the National Center for Health Care Technology, has been created to review new medical devices and procedures and recommend to the Health