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Gratiot Area
Chamber of Commerce |
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Health is Free
By Gregg J. Stefanek, DO Over 70 people were in attendance at Alma College on June
13th as Dee Edington from the University of Michigan’s Health
Management Resource Center explained why we cannot continue business as usual
when it comes to paying for our health care. He demonstrated how health care
costs continue to go up in direct proportion to our increasing health risks.
Employers are bearing some of this cost but are being forced to pass an
increasingly larger amount onto the employee, both directly by deducting more
from paychecks, and indirectly by choosing less rich health plans. Dee showed
how this cost-shifting does not address the underlying problem, will fail in
the short run, and that the best solution is to adopt a strategy that
addresses the root cause, our increasing health risks. Health risks include such things as smoking, high blood
pressure, high bad cholesterol, low good cholesterol, obesity, stress,
depression, excessive alcohol use, an unsatisfied life, poor perceived
health, many existing health problems, lack of seat belt usage, many work
days missed because of illness, and a lack of exercise. How many of these do
you have? You are considered to be low risk if you have 2 or less risk
factors and high risk if you have 4 or more. By reducing our risk factors, by
remaining low risk, or by at least not getting more risk factors we can
decrease, or at least stop the increase, in our health care costs. How does a community work together to reduce the health
risks of its residents? First, individuals need to know what their health
risks are and we need to identify and tear down the barriers to good health
that exist in our County. Secondly, we need to create and cultivate an
environment that is conducive to healthy behavior. Thirdly, we need to
encourage people and give them incentive to take charge of their own health
and participate in the various programs that will be a part of our healthy
environment. Lastly, we must make a special effort to keep the low risk
people low risk, before they start down the self-perpetuating path toward
high risk status. What would it be like to live in a place where it could be
proudly displayed “this is a healthy community”? How much more productive and
happy would we be? How much new business and industry could we attract? If we have good health don’t we really
have just about everything we truly need? Health is free. The amount of money
we spend on improving our health status will always be less than the benefits
we receive. Wellness Matters Gratiot believes it is time for us to become the
healthy community we can be. Dee’s presentation on June 13th was videotaped.
For those of you interested in a copy please let me know and I will get you
one when they are available. Also contact me if you were unable to attend and
you either want to provide leadership or are willing to serve on a strategic
planning task force that will be responsible for designing the specifics of
our initiative. Thank you. Gregg J. Stefanek, DO |
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