Meghan McCarty Carino

Daniel Shin produced this episode.

Jesus Alvarado also produces our show.

And special thanks to producer Nick Giang this week.

Gary O'Keefe is our engineer.

Daisy Palacios is the supervising producer.

Nancy Fargali is the executive producer.

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?

We'll be right back.