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Note from the Editor


Published: September 1, 2009
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A Healthy Debate?

A note from the editor


 

Originally Published EMDM September 2009


 

A Healthy Debate?

 

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As I write this, it is the tail end of what is traditionally called the silly season. The term originally described how newspaper publishers and editors dealt with a slow news cycle in the summer by encouraging their reporters to take a more "creative" tack. It also has come to describe the stream of vapid movies that Hollywood unleashes upon the world in the summer months. This is the first year, however, that I can recall, when a public debate on healthcare reform in the United States has come to define the silly season. Don't take my word for it—cue the highlight reel.

  • Outraged citizens storm town hall meetings to decry a "government takeover of the healthcare system," which some see as rampant communism.
     
  • One keen scholar of political science brandishes a poster of President Obama with a Hitler-like moustache. So, is the administration marching America down the road to national socialism or communism? I'm confused.
     
  • Hopping-mad patriots packing guns—legally—attend town hall meetings to listen in as legislators answer questions about healthcare reform.
     
  • A former vice presidential candidate posts a rant on her Facebook page about the “death panels” that the Obama administration plans to establish. A cadre of government bureaucrats would decide whether gramps really needs that hip replacement at his advanced age. You know, just like they do in those European countries that have socialised medicine.
     
I could go on and on and on . . . It’s all good entertainment, and a godsend for the media. What’s unfortunate is that the human comedy on display is obscuring so many real issues that deserve debate: the legions of uninsured, unsustainably expensive healthcare, people with preexisting conditions that can’t find affordable insurance, to name but three. One issue of great concern to you, as part of the global med-tech industry, is the effect that healthcare reform in the United States may have on your business.

 

The United States is a locus of medical innovation, not to mention a significant source of revenue for nations that export medical technology such as Germany, France and the United Kingdom. Bending down the cost curve is an imperative for any healthcare reform bill. Should industry be nervous? Not necessarily.

 

“Patient-centered management of resources can result in lower cost and better outcomes,” writes Eucomed CEO John Wilkinson on the association’s blog (eucomed.blogactiv.eu). He likens the process to the way in which quality systems have transformed the cost and quality of medical manufacturing. “To do this, technology and innovation have to be embraced and valued,” notes Wilkinson. To what extent healthcare legislation being drafted by the US Congress will adhere to this principle remains to be seen, but I am quite confident that Obama sees the value in this proposition and will steer policy in this direction.

 

And here’s another fact to help keep things in perspective: medical devices represent a little over 6% of total healthcare spend in the United States and Europe, according to data compiled by Eucomed and US industry association AdvaMed. Cost containment measures under the banner of healthcare reform, therefore, probably will not significantly affect the medical device industry. At worst, they won’t be dramatically different from what it has known in the past.

 

The US med-tech industry has been—and should remain—vigilant as healthcare reform takes shape but, wisely, it has not taken an obstructionist position. As an editorialist in the Financial Times recently wrote: “The demands of decency aside . . . mending US healthcare is a pressing economic goal. The case for change is irresistible.”

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