By Mannix Porterfield
Register-Herald reporter
October 24, 2008 09:16 pm
—
Crime, congestion and the stress of a huge metropolis are ways of life in New York City.
In West Virginia, about 62 percent live in a rural, laid-back environment.
So who enjoys better health?
“Believe it or not, the average New Yorker is healthier than the average Mountaineer,” says Steve Roberts, president of the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce.
“They’re more affluent. They can afford to take better care of themselves. And they have a lower rate of smoking and a higher rate of exercise. And chiefly, they do it by walking to and from work, and walking at lunch time.”
Roberts uses the example in plugging for a tax incentive to West Virginia firms to offer a wellness program — one of 10 points the chamber is pitching to the Legislature in the realm of health care issues.
Perhaps a company could bring in a nurse two hours a week to discuss wellness issues.
Or provide coolers that offer fresh fruits and vegetables in lieu of fast-food fare workers consume on lunch hours. Even a few minutes for a brisk walk or other exercise.
“We think there are ways to provide incentives for companies to have wellness programs,” Roberts says. “Give them a tax break.”
Another point is related — personal responsibility.
“We need to help people understand that if you eat food that is bad for you, use tobacco, drive around without your seatbelt on, you are going to be sicker, you are not going to live as long, you are not going to feel as good,” Roberts said.
A third issue with the chamber is the move, already taken in other states, to impose a network of retaining medical records electronically so that all doctors, clinics, hospitals and other providers can “talk” to each other via computer databases, providing instant access to a patient’s records.
Some in medicine have estimated a cost savings of up to 30 percent. Realistically, Roberts sees a reduction of 15 to 20 percent by avoiding reams of paperwork, not to mention the time lost in tracking down individual patient histories.
“Even though the savings associated with this are enormous, it’s also very, very expensive and technical to get started,” Roberts said.
A fourth point the chamber is pushing calls for an increase in funding for medical education so students are trained in that field. In some instances, good-paying jobs are going begging for lack of trained graduates to fill them.
For instance, a registered nurse can pick up a diploma and find an $80,000 a year salary just waiting to be earned.
“We have jobs for every child that comes out in the health care field, whether they are nurses’ aides, a data entry person, whatever they may be,” Roberts said. “I think that’s one of our most overlooked opportunities in West Virginia.”
An abiding fact of life with a state growing older is a fifth point in the chamber’s program — the steep cost of end-of-life care. And that’s a delicate issue that Roberts says he doesn’t view lightly.
“We need to help people understand that all of us need to give more thought to how we want to leave,” he said.
“I’m very clear on this. I don’t want my family, my children, to spend the remainder of whatever money I might have trying to keep me alive for another week or two. Those can be very, very hard decisions at the time you have to make them. That’s why you have to think of them in advance.”
Which is all the chamber is asking of the Legislature — that better planning and an improved understanding of the options be considered.
“The notion that we’re going to put somebody who is very, very old and very, very sick on a respirator and keep them alive is really not doing anybody any good,” Roberts said.
“I don’t mean to be hard-hearted about this in any way, but it’s just a fact we spend more than half of our health care dollars on the last six months of life.”
Four other points the chamber is advancing to the Legislature call for incentives for both employer and worker alike in purchasing health insurance, a lessening of the practice of shifting costs from the public to private sector, a network of “medical homes” so more people see physicians routinely rather than wait until a serious illness attacks and expansion of community clinics.
“Any time the public sector underpays, either in Medicare, Medicaid or PEIA, then that gets made up somewhere and it tends to be made up by private sector insurance,” Roberts said.
A number of “credible estimates” show private insurance is costlier simply because the government isn’t paying its share, Roberts said.
“It certainly makes insurance more expensive and that tends to be felt more by small businesses,” he said, noting the small business community comprises 85 percent of the chamber membership.
As with general health attitudes, Roberts says the chamber is emphasizing prevention as well.
“We’ve got so many people that are struggling just to get by (that) they don’t have time to really learn how to do that,” he said. “We think that we can get out there and teach them.”
— E-mail: mannix@register-herald.com
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