IN THE KNOW: U.S. Sens. Roger Wicker, Tom Coburn and John Barrasso visited Baptist Memorial Hospital-DeSoto on Thursday, where they met with doctors and the hospital’s patient advisory council. Coburn and Barrasso are both physicians. -- PHOTO BY TOM WILEMON

The sign over a hospital toilet illustrated why health care costs are soaring in the United States, said U.S. Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming after touring Baptist Memorial Hospital-DeSoto.

“Upstairs in this hospital, I went into the restroom and there’s a sign on the toilet, ‘Maximum weight of this toilet 350 pounds,’” Barrasso said. “Think about that. There was a story that came out last week in USA

Today, in The Wall Street Journal, in The New York Times about the cost of obesity to the health care system.

“It was $178 billion a year in added costs because of people who are eating too much and exercising too little.”

Barrasso visited the hospital late last week along with fellow Republicans U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi. Coburn and Barrasso are doctors and have been hosting discussions on health care at various venues throughout the U.S.

Prevention and cures

The Republican senators said the emphasis of health care reform should be on controlling costs, such as addressing the nation’s obesity epidemic, instead of expanding the government program. Coburn is an author of the Patients’ Choice Act, a Republican-sponsored alternative to Democratic health care reform proposals.

“Health care in this country is too expensive,” Coburn said. “The quality is good and great. If you get really sick, this is the place in the world you want to be, but it costs too much. It costs twice what it costs the rest of the world per person.

“The thing that we ought to do about fixing it is increase the value we get out of the health care system. If we do that, then we’re going to have much better health care and no increase in costs. Most of the costs that we are seeing are driven because we don’t manage and incentivize chronic illness.

“Chronic illness consumes 75 percent of the money that we spend on health care, so we need to be about preventing it. We need to incentivize prevention, wellness and the management of chronic diseases.”

He also called for tort reform to cut the cost of doctors practicing defensive medicine and for measures to eliminate fraud.

Root causes, not Band-Aids

Wicker said he opposes a government-sponsored plan for the uninsured as proposed by Democratic legislators, which he characterized as a “massive takeover by the federal government of one-sixth of our economy.”

“We save money rather than spend money,” Coburn said, explaining the bill. “We eliminate the discrimination against the Medicaid patient because we put every Medicaid patient in private insurance. The state of Mississippi will probably save $300 million a year when we do that. Not only do we cut the federal costs of it, we actually save Mississippi money.”

Coburn said the government should follow the example of Safeway Inc. in enacting health care reform. Safeway’s plan provides incentives for employees to lower risk factors and make healthier life choices.

Steven A. Burd, the company’s chief executive officer, in an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal this summer wrote that the company had kept its per capita health care costs flat for the past four years.

Premiums vary according to factors such as tobacco use, weight and cholesterol levels. Employees can receive refunds on their premiums when they reach health goals, such as losing weight.

Money spent on health problems stemming from obesity accounts for almost 10 percent of all medical costs, according to a study released last month by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The senators criticized Democratic health care proposals for not addressing the obesity problem and not identifying other ways to reduce the cost of health care.