PORT ANGELES — Clallam County League of Women Voters plans a series of four forums on the health care system, with the first forum set Thursday.
“The league has a longstanding interest in health care reform,” said Bertha Cooper, a retired health care administrator who is an organizer of the league’s series of health care reform forums, all of which are free and open to the public.
“We are scheduling the forums because the cost of health care is growing dramatically, and it’s becoming unaffordable for many who are hard-working people . . . so what we’re seeing is more and more people who are not insured, who are not able to get health insurance,” Cooper said.
First forum
The first forum is scheduled at 7 p.m. Thursday in the Little Theater on the Peninsula College’s Port Angeles campus, 1502 E. Lauridsen Blvd.
Olympic Medical Center is sponsoring the forums.
Thursday’s opening forum sets the stage, Cooper said, to show the existing high-cost system’s poor outcomes.
Speakers scheduled for the forum are:
■ Eric Lewis, chief executive officer of Olympic Medical Center, who will discuss the health care system and its effect on local services.
■ Frederick Chen, an associate professor at the University of Washington School of Medicine and chief of family medicine at Harborview Medical Center, who will talk about the national cost of health care and its impact on the U.S. economy.
■ Dr. Tom Locke, Clallam and Jefferson counties health officer, who will discuss statistics that rank the longevity of residents of the United States in 33rd place among other countries, a recent fall from 29th place. Locke is a medical doctor with a master’s degree in public health.
■ Rose Gibbs, a registered nurse with the Dungeness Valley Health & Wellness Clinic, who will tell stories of how the system affects people she has encountered.
■ Phil Castell, Sequim insurance agent, who will talk about the impact on business.
The system’s characteristics that reformers have yet to address will be presented, Cooper said.
Cooper said one in seven U.S. jobs are not in health care.
Fifty years ago, health care was 5 percent of the gross national product, Cooper said. Now, it is 18 percent.
“That’s a huge market,” she said.
The remaining three forums will be held in June, July and August, and are still being planned, Cooper said.
Future presentations
Future presentations are expected to include the moral and ethical issues raised by limiting access, the health care market and its importance to the economy and the health of the nation, and a discussion of options for broad reform.
The league in September sponsored a forum about the Affordable Care Act.
Now, the league is going beyond that to talk about the need for broad reform, Cooper said, to help slow escalating costs.
“Right now, we have a business-based system,” Cooper said.
“And unless you are on Medicaid, employers provide a system of health care, and it’s become more and more hard for businesses to provide health care as a benefit, and some businesses are not providing it for that reason.”
Meanwhile, she said, “the cost continues to grow at a greater rate than other things in our country.”
Cooper said the three future forums will address the moral question of whether health care is an individual responsibility, more detail of nature and totality of multibillion-dollar health care business and what individuals need to be aware of in the market.
The final forum will focus on alternatives and solutions, with speakers offering “big-picture answers,” she said.
“This is a big project,” she said of the league’s forums.
“We think it’s very important. We are hoping for a huge interest and turnout.”
Cooper said the league plans to video-record each forum to further inform county residents.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-681-2390 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.
