In the St. Joseph News-Press, on Wednesday, September 29, Jason Gregory, candidate for the 27th District House of Representatives seat, stated that St. Joseph’s health–care costs were the highest in the state in 2008 and 2009 according to the Missouri Department of Economic Development. He also alluded to the fact that bringing a competing hospital to St. Joseph would help to lower these costs. THESE CLAIMS ARE NOT ACCURATE.

• Dean Frutiger at the Council for Community and Economic Research (C2ER), the organization that reports the cost of living data, stressed that the data is not inclusive, and is not meant to represent health–care costs specifically, as it only measures five representative areas: the cost of a dental cleaning, an optometrist visit, a doctor’s routine evaluation, 50 tablets of Advil and 30 tablets of Lipitor. The data is meant to be used only as a rough index to provide professional people a cost of living baseline when considering moving from one part of the country to another.
  
  
• That being said, regarding the cost of living reporting mechanism, the graph from the report reflecting 2nd quarter of 2010 stating health–care costs in Missouri by city does not show St Joseph as the highest and also demonstrates a significant drop from the level reported in the 4th quarter of 2009 — from 104.4 to 95.4.
  
  
• This index uses the cost of the following services and medicines to calculate the health–care section of the cost of living analysis:

(ACCRA Cost of Living Index, Volume 41, No.2)

We would like to take credit for the drastic decrease in cost referenced above, but as this information shows, the cost of health care provided at Heartland Regional Medical Center is not included in the index. In reality, the change in the cost of Lipitor has more impact than any other factor in this index.

• This is a reporting of how much people use resources, not just the cost of the services. Data shows that we have a higher than average smoking, obesity, heart disease and diabetes rates in our area as compared to the rest of the state. These cause patients to use our health–care system much more frequently than others in the country. The poverty level in our area is also high. Access to health care late in disease is more costly when people make the decision to wait to seek health care until they can afford it or have no choice.
  
  
• For this community to truly address the cost of health care, we need to work together to improve health status and appropriate access to health care, and to mitigate these factors, all of us, not just those in health care, need to work to improve education and create jobs.
  
  
• In spite of the above inaccuracies, it is important to note that the report also states that Missouri has the 5th lowest cost of living in the country and St Joseph is slightly lower than that of Missouri. Given that, this is a great place to live and work.

For more information:
http://www.missourieconomy.org/indicators/cost_of_living/index.stm
http://www.coli.org/Interpretation.asp