BRISTOL, Tenn. – Wellness care and personal responsibility should be at the heart of any plan to reduce health-care costs, said a panel of experts who met Wednesday at the Bristol Chamber of Commerce.
“Health care is a personal responsibility,” said Bart Hove, president of Bristol Regional Medical Center. “Unless we can convince people to wash their hands so they won’t get a cold, then we won’t see a decrease in costs.”
Hove was one of four who participated in the panel discussion. Also on the panel were Tennessee Rep. Jon Lunberg, R-1st, and Margot Seay, president of the AARP Tennessee.
The event was hosted by the chamber and organized by the National Federation of Independent Businesses. The NFIB’s Tennessee director, Jim Brown, also was on the panel.
“Fifty percent of all health-care cost increases are the result of our own choices,” Brown said, adding that people need to take more responsibility for managing their health care and for eating and living better.
Brown said community and business-led wellness programs are one way to bring costs down. Such programs emphasize the need for better lifestyle choices, more exercise and getting routine medical care to prevent small problems from becoming big ones.
“We really need to work with the consumer, showing the link between behavior and health care,” Seay said.
According to its Web site, AARP is currently working on two wellness initiatives, Step Up to Better Health and Get Fit on Route 66, both of which encourage people to add more exercise time to their daily routines.
Hove said Bristol Regional talks about wellness initiatives during every new employee orientation. But he added that more work is needed to “work that fabric back into our culture.”
Another factor affecting health-care costs is the lack of health insurance coverage. Brown said unpaid medical bills in Tennessee went from $1 billion in 2004 to $1.4 billion in 2007. These costs have had a local impact as well, Hove said.
Over the past year, Bristol Regional has accumulated $16 million in bad debt from people who simply did not pay their hospital bills. It spent another $20 million on indigent care, or health care given to people who proved they could not afford it.”
Hove and Smith said hospitals and other care providers often must cover these losses by increasing bills for people who can afford the care by as much as 10 percent.
Both men said they were encouraged by a new emphasis being placed on creating a national health care system, but Hove cautioned that “there is not one simple solution or fix to the health care situation.”
Smith said the government also should allow small-business owners to form collectives so they can get health insurance coverage for their employees at rates offered to larger companies. The federation also is pushing to change policies that treat people who have pre-existing conditions differently than those who do not, he said.
“There are some things that government can do,” said Lundberg, who encouraged those in the audience to tell him of ways to improve health care.
Lundberg said the best answers will probably come from a partnership of business leaders, doctors and insurance agency representatives and he looks forward to hearing their suggestions before the legislative session starts Jan. 13. But government also is limited in what it can do, Lundberg said, and it “can’t legislate that people take the responsibility [for their care.]”
gmclean@bristolnews.com | (276) 645-2518
Email
Facebook
Google
Twitter
Favorites
More
Advertisement