ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, October 27, 1996 TAG: 9610280080
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
HEALTH CARE may have cooled as an issue among politicians in Washington - but it hasn't faded from voters' minds.
``Health care is an issue they have to be able to deal with. We all expect to be able to get health care and the type of service we need, when we need it. The other question is, how can we afford it? '' Pat Ebbett Roanoke County
``I have pretty good health insurance and probably could go on without Medicare, but I think this whole focus on this cutting back on these health programs is pretty dangerous for the standard of living in this country. I don't think we want to go backwards.'' Pat Moriarty Huddleston
``One of my major concerns, being self-employed, is health insurance and the cost of health care. I would like to see something accomplished in that area, and I don't feel like it was the last go-around.'' James Jones Bedford
``I worry about my grandchildren. I worry about Medicare. When I go to Montgomery County Hospital and I see people without insurance, I'm troubled. My gall bladder operation cost more money than the janitors in my building make in a year.'' Bob Benoit Blacksburg
By SANDRA BROWN KELLY STAFF WRITER
Health care and government are like Siamese twins who have little hope of leading separate lives. Congress has its hands all over health, doing everything from setting standards for how long a woman should be able to stay in a hospital after giving birth to searching for ways to cut Medicare costs.
Health care ranked behind education, crime, taxes and economic concerns in a statewide survey on election issues for The Roanoke Times and The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, but it's still an issue that voters worry about.
The words they use when they discuss it? Access. Affordability. Continuation.
Health care is an issue that Congress "has to deal with," Pat Ebbett of Roanoke County said during one of several round-table discussions The Roanoke Times held with randomly selected voters this year to discuss political issues.
"I don't quite look at health care as a right, but for society in general, it's something we have to provide, or we won't have the kind of society we want," she said. She also said she views mental and physical health care as equally important.
Ebbett, who has a master's degree in hospital administration and is the human resources manager at Catawba Hospital, also has worked in an acute care hospital and with a home health care agency.
Good health care can't be separated from the country's focus on learning and education, she said.
Children who don't receive care when they're young, who miss immunizations, aren't going to succeed in education as well as those who do get proper health care, Ebbett said.
She said the country can't afford to cut back on Medicaid - the federal and state program that helps pay for health care for the poor - and similar programs such as Head Start. Currently, more than 330,000 Virginians younger than 21 receive Medicaid at an annual cost of $283million.
"But you can't expect someone to do well if they're not healthy," Ebbett said.
On the other hand, Ebbett believes society - Congress - eventually will have to come to grips with the issue of how much health care the country can afford for the elderly.
"Can we give everybody the full spectrum?" she said. "I certainly wouldn't want to be the one to have to make the decision."
Bob Benoit, a Virginia Tech biology professor from Blacksburg, says he "worries" about whether Medicare, the federal health insurance program for people 65 and older, will survive, not for himself, but for his grandchildren.
Western Virginians know firsthand that even with the progress politicians point to, access to health care still eludes many citizens.
For example:
* A young New River Valley mother of three can't work because she has epilepsy. She and her husband haven't been able to afford health insurance, let alone her medications - which cost more than $200 a month, or a week's paycheck for her husband.
* Patient services at the Free Clinic of the New River Valley more than doubled in the past two years, said Mark Cruise, executive director. Currently, 544 people are on the clinic's waiting list for dental care.
* The Bradley Free Clinic, which annually serves more than 12,000 working people who can't afford health care, last week had to turn away lines of people waiting for dental care. Both clinics also are seeing huge leaps in the demand for medications.
"Every year, patient numbers increase by 10 percent, but the ones for prescriptions increase by 20 or 30 percent," executive director Estelle Avner said.
"Patients can be seen in emergency rooms without paying, which is wonderful," Avner said. "But when they walk out, they can't go anywhere to get their medicines."
Women, in particular, go unprotected for health care, Roanoker Sandra Beard said.
"I wonder what politicians are going to do about it," she said.
Beard, 52, has experience to back up her position.
She recently lost her part-time job with the state's Department of Rehabilitative Services and found herself without insurance. She also has osteoporosis, a disorder in which bones become brittle. Her husband is disabled and retired with a full pension, so the couple is financially secure, Beard said.
Except for her health care.
"I don't need money; I just need my medical insurance, and the only way I get insurance is to go to work," Beard said.
She considers herself lucky to have found a new job - and insurance - with Explore Park in Roanoke County.
Beard also applauds a new federal insurance portability act, although it didn't come soon enough to help her daughter, who suffers from asthma.
When Beard's daughter recently changed jobs, she had to wait a year before her asthma was covered by the insurance she obtained through her new company.
During that year, the daughter didn't go for treatment when she needed it because she couldn't afford it. As a result, she ended up in the hospital.
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, which passed this summer and goes into effect July 1, 1997, will make it easier for people to change jobs without worrying about losing health insurance because of a pre-existing medical condition.
The legislation also guarantees that small companies and self-employed individuals cannot be rejected for coverage.
The law doesn't say everyone should be able to afford the insurance, however.
Beard said insurance ought to be so universally available that anyone can afford it.
"It's time we had some kind of plan that we all can get into," she said.
Western Virginia has a higher-than-average interest in the success of universal access to health care.
Fifteen of the 19 counties in the 9th Congressional District, represented by Democrat Rick Boucher of Abingdon, are federally designated as medically underserved areas.
The positive side of the designation is that several million federal dollars have been given for programs to improve the situation - including money to Roanoke's College of Health Sciences so it can train health professionals from those target counties.
Perhaps because the congressional candidates know that the health care debate is chronic, most of them haven't talked much about it.
Boucher presses for federal money for the disadvantaged counties in his district, and Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Roanoke, has taken the message of the need for Medicare cost control to the voters. But the only candidate to put health care on the table is Democrat Mark Warner, who is opposing Republican Sen. John Warner.
Mark Warner's advertising and his conversations point to his role in establishing the Virginia Health Care Foundation, of which he was the founding chairman. The public-private grant agency is patterned after Fairfax County's Medical Care for Children program, which Mark Warner brought to the attention of then-Gov. Douglas Wilder and the General Assembly.
Two years ago, the foundation gave Highland County $150,000 to establish a medical center. Last year, it gave a $175,000 grant to Roanoke's College of Health Sciences to establish the state's first physician assistant program. This year, the New River Valley's Program for Special Medical Care got $45,000 to set up a nonemergency health care transportation service.
Although it has not been part of his stumping, Virgil Goode of Rocky Mount, the Democrat seeking the 5th District seat in Congress, is on record as a supporter of the foundation's public-private approach to improving health care. All of the candidates, as expected, want citizens to get health care and generally agree that citizens need to take better care of themselves and help police waste in the health system. They don't agree on what to do to control Medicare costs, but they expect to have to face the issue.
LENGTH: Long : 155 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: (headshots) Ebbett, Moriarty, Jones, Benoit. color. KEYWORDS: POLITICS CONGRESSby CNB