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Chattanooga: Local health care access a problem, panelists agree

By: Elizabeth Ryan
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Mark Sims

Chattanooga boasts excellent physicians and health care facilities, local medical professionals say, but many working people and small-business people here cannot afford to use them.

“Health care also relies on access, and that often relies on your insurance status. Access remains a significant and growing problem,” Rae Bond, executive director of the Chattanooga and Hamilton County Medical Society, said Wednesday at a panel discussion.

Ms. Bond joined panelists Paula Register, CEO of Memorial Health Partners; Mark Sims, CEO of Parkridge East Hospital; and Barbara Weinhold, former clinic director of Volunteers in Medicine, for a discussion on health care issues.

The forum offered a chance for business leaders to ask questions and better understand an issue that concerns employees and employers alike, according to John Bailes, president of the Midtown Chamber Council, part of the Chattanooga Area Chamber of Commerce and sponsor of the event.

“We have a lot of small-business people who struggle to keep health care insurance affordable for them and for their employees,” he said.

According to a September 2007 survey conducted by the United Benefit Advisors, the average cost to insure a single employee was $325 a month, and it was about $900 for families. Such premiums can be prohibitive for small businesses — those with 25 or fewer employees — especially if an employee is known to have an “ongoing health condition” such as cancer, heart disease or Type I diabetes, said Russ Blakely, president of Russ Blakely and Associates, a Chattanooga-based health insurance agent.

Premiums for companies with chronically ill employees can be higher than the average rates by 50 percent or more, he said.

“I would say that this right here is the most common reason why an employer has to keep drastically cutting benefits or eventually letting the insurance go,” Mr. Blakely said.

The result is a large population of working people who go without insurance, the panelists said. Ms. Weinhold said many patients who visit the Volunteers in Medicine free clinic in Eastgate are those who earn too much to qualify for health care programs such as Medicaid or TennCare but don’t earn enough to afford insurance premiums.

The panelists agreed that universal health care could offer a possible solution to the dilemma, but they stressed that encouraging healthy lifestyles also is an important part of the puzzle.

For Chattanooga City Councilwoman Carol Berz, who represents the area that includes midtown and Brainerd, local governments could make those lifestyles easier to achieve.

“As a public official, the one thing I can contribute is the thing I keep asking our city for, and that’s sidewalks so that people can become healthy,” said Ms. Berz, who attended the health care forum.

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