Meghan McCarty Carino

Oh, right.

You mentioned 3D printed meringue looking houses, one neighbor's house, you joked about it looking like a bunker.

This was a neighborhood that was known for its charm and its beauty of the old houses.

Like, what are these houses going to look like?

Are they going to be good looking?

That was David Brancaccio, host of the Marketplace Morning Report.

Nicholas Guillaume produced this episode.

I'm Megan McCarty Carino, and that's Marketplace Tech.

This is APM.

It's been a decade since 3D printing came to the prosthetics industry, and it still hasn't brought costs down.

From American Public Media, this is Marketplace Tech.

I'm Megan McCarty Carino.

Prosthetic limbs can be pricey, costing thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

So the industry seemed ripe for disruption when 3D printing came along.

The technology requires little labor and uses economical materials.

But the reality of 3D printing prosthetic limbs isn't that straightforward, according to writer Britt Young, who uses a prosthetic arm and wrote about this recently for IEE Spectrum magazine.

One of the factors that you describe as being a barrier to reducing cost actually has nothing to do with the actual devices, but how insurance is covering them.

Can you tell me more about that?

And was that a 3D printed attachment?

Or do you have any experience kind of navigating this specific 3D prosthetic market?