PORT ANGELES — Overpriced gadgets and the incessant marketing of prescription drugs are contributing to a broken health-care system in the United States, three experts said in a seminar at Peninsula College this week.
More than 100 people filled the Little Theater at the college campus in Port Angeles on Wednesday for a two-hour lecture featuring:
• Patrick Noonan, vice president of MedAssets Inc., consultants to Healthcare Systems.
• Art Zoloth, pharmacological activist, associate professor of pharmacy at the University of Washington and Washington State University.
• Tom Locke, health officer of Clallam and Jefferson counties and a specialist in preventive medicine.
Sponsors included the League of Women Voters Clallam County, United Way Access to Health Care Coalition, Jefferson County Access to Healthcare, Associated Student Council of Peninsula College and Port Angeles Regional Chamber of Commerce.
An expected question-and-answer session was nixed because the lecture reached its predetermined time limit.
Medical devices
Noonan kicked off the evening with a talk called “Medical Devices — A Broken System of Cost and Procurement.”
To illustrate the high cost of medical devices, he passed around a silver dollar-shaped automatic implantable cardioverter defibrillator.
“These things cost almost $1,000 a letter,” Noonan said.
The device costs $750 to make, but is sold for between $35,000 to $55,000.
“It’s wrong,” he said.
If U.S. health care were a sovereign state, it would be the sixth largest economy in the world, Noonan said. He said legislators lack the will to curb health-care costs.
“The problem is the system,” he said.
Total transparency, strict rules, healthy incentives, education and competition are needed to solve the problem of high costs in medical devices.
“We have a cost problem, not an access problem,” Noonan said.
Pills, profits
Zoloth followed with “Pills, Profits & Politics,” in which he addressed the commercialization of health care.
Money, not wellness, has become the incentive.
“Drug decision-making is not about science, drug decision-making is about marketing,” Zoloth said.
Zoloth described a “culture of denial,” saying that pharmaceutical companies coddle and mislead physicians, many of whom have minimal training in pharmacology, into writing prescriptions for overly expensive drugs.
He said generic drugs are a good alternative.
“I’m not at all uncomfortable with the generic industry,” Zoloth said.
Reforms
In the final presentation, “Health Care Reform Options: How They Affect You,” Locke conceded that the country has a broken health-care system and posed the question: “What are we going to do about it?”
He brought up health-care access, value and disparity.
Access is more complex than affordability, Locke said.
“Availability is also very important,” he said.
In rural communities, there is a greater gap in the ratio of patients to doctors. He described health-care plans as “medical motels” that change when an employer switches providers.
“Our quality at best is mediocre compared to many other countries, and our costs are very high,” Locke said.
Locke said disparity is the real reason the U.S. does so poorly compared to other counties in health care.
“It’s not that it’s lousy care, it’s the extraordinary inequities in our system,” he said.
“This is where we can do the most good for the least amount of dollars.”
To help solve the health-care crisis, Locke put fourth an argument in support of preventative medicine.
“We need to strike a better balance between disease treatment and disease prevention,” Locke said.
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Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be reached at 360-417-3537 or at rob.ollikainen@peninsuladailynews.com.
