Shared Concerns
For all of us, the cost and the availability of health care are major
concerns--whether we are caregivers for aging parents, mothers and
fathers of small children, or individuals struggling with chronic or
devastating illnesses.
Long-term care is a growing area of concern as modern medicine
enables us to live longer. Many of us have experienced the
challenges of this issue at a personal level. Like many of
you, I too have cared for aging parents and experienced the stresses and
challenges as a day-to-day caregiver.
Together we need to make sure that we all receive good health
care. How we provide that will take much discussion and debate,
but it is a necessary conversation. The cost to everyone is too
high otherwise: public health issues, high bills to cover indigent care,
and a generation of North Carolinians who will not have the benefits of
good health and the ability to be productive citizens.
Rising Health Care Costs
Rising health care costs are impacting our rural hospitals, our
family doctors' practices, and our health insurance premiums. Many
of our neighbors struggle to pay for necessary medicines and need
affordable prescription drug programs.
As a
member of the House Insurance Committee, I have heard testimony from
many North Carolinians. They shared their stories about the effect
of high health costs on their lives and on their ability to function as
productive members of our society.
Particularly moving have been the accounts of workers laid off from
companies such as Pillowtex. They have suddenly lost all their benefits,
as well as their jobs. When insurance is available to them, the
rates are unaffordable and they now have no way to pay for coverage.
Health Care Subcommittee on Safety, Quality and Accountability
It is time to stop placing blame and to start looking together for
solutions to North Carolina's health care needs.
During the present interim, I am pleased to have been appointed to
the House Select Committee on Health Care and to chair the Subcommittee
on Safety, Quality and Accountability. We are surveying current patient
safety activities in the state. We will be proposing ways the
legislature can help coordinate and enhance those efforts in an interim
report to the short session and a final report to the 2007 session.
By promoting patient safety we will reduce
medical error, save lives, limit lawsuits, and keep doctors'
medical-malpractice premiums from rising. Increasing patient safety also
should help reduce health care costs.
District Health Care Facilities
Strokes, heart attacks, and cancer are the foremost threats to the
health of North Carolinians. Our regional medical centers, Halifax
Regional, Franklin Regional, and Nash General, are crucial to the
awareness, prevention, and treatment of these conditions. The
medical centers serve a growing number of Medicaid patients, an
increasing financial burden on our counties.
In 2005 I supported efforts to have the state relieve some part of the
counties' Medicaid costs.
I am highly interested in the availability of health care centers
that serve our area. For example, below I am on a tour of the
new Roanoke Valley Women's Imaging Center, an expansion of Halifax
Regional Medical Center's facilities. An important component of
health care services in Franklin County is the splendid Franklin County
Volunteers in Medicine Free Medical Clinic, which celebrated its first
year in Louisburg in January 2006. Patients with chronic conditions
such as diabetes and high blood pressure receive medications and
monitoring, saving lives and reducing the need for expensive emergency
room treatment.
