Calaveras County Health Care Reform talking points

When we bring up health care reform today, please know people are anxious, fear losing what they have, and crave stability. They want details, and they want our elected officials to explain and reassure. They also have doubts, especially about cost. And at the senior center, they could have serious doubts about care for the elderly – and if it will be rationed based on your age.

Our local elected officials, and even our Congressman, are not in a position to provide a lot of reassurance here but that’s not the point. We want to pose questions that show Obama’s health care reform will help seniors and residents of all ages feel healthier and live healthier lives, and that communities, elected officials and residents alike, can and should play a role. So let’s focus on wellness, a major cornerstone of health care reform.

For Calaveras County this means:

• Supporting communities where fresh and healthier food, not just fast food, is within easy access and is affordable

• Supporting walking paths and bike paths that encourage physical activity, and where the opportunity to exercise is more widely available in the workplace

• Supporting school health and fitness programs

These are the good things about health care reform we want to share:

• the government plans on taking a leading role in facilitating changes in the our behavior as we practice more healthy lifestyles, and holding patients accountable to some degree for their health and wellness. It is understood not everyone will ‘play along’ and someone or something needs to provide incentives.

• The government also wants to move us from a paper-based to an electronic system, which will greatly lower costs of providing health care and will also speed up services – meaning less waiting time in the ‘waiting room’.

• The government wants to make sure primary care providers are available – in our rural setting this is a really big deal because practitioners tend not to settle in rural areas because they can’t earn a living here

So let’s talk up the fact that we supports these improvements for Calaveras and while we’re speaking, sprinkle in a healthy dose of health care reform facts and values!

Last November Americans voted in Obama because they want the government to step in and facilitate these changes. The marketplace is failing to do so – our free market system does not offer the proper choices for a healthy lifestyle. The costs of an unhealthy American population are too high. This week we learned that spending on obesity-related medical issues jumped 82 percent from 2001 to 2006, with the current price tag $147 billion a year.Fighting obesity is really a public health issue that must be centered in individual communities, workplaces, and schools and involve grassroots action and education. And the initiative must get into high gear now.

Prepared by Mary Boblet, former Parks and Recreation Commissioner and resident of Calaveras County