Big Medicine's Malignant Growth

By Stan Cox, AlterNet. Posted February 22, 2006.

Some medical professionals say the only way to rid ourselves of medicine's vast piles of waste is to shrink the health care industry itself. Are they heretics or visionaries?

Andrew Jameton dug through the clutter of his bookshelf and pulled out a flexible plastic ventilator circuit. "This is used by a patient for two days, and we throw it away," he said. "In the past, they were used for just one day, so we're making progress, I guess."

He handed me a thin, colorful cardboard box, about half the size of a sheet of paper. "Pharmaceutical samples came in this. It holds three pills."