The advocate, Perry Bryant, a former director of West Virginians for Affordable Health Care, visit CAMC’s board in January to ask for it to support the measure in an effort to bring down the state’s high smoking rates. Mr. Bryant has since publicly criticized the hospital for its inaction regarding the tax increase.
“Once a decade you have the opportunity to really drive down tobacco utilization, and we ought to aggressively pursue that and not just pass it off to the committees and others,” Mr. Bryant told the Charleston Gazette-Mail.
Mr. Bryant explained he approached CAMC for support because it’s West Virginia’s largest hospital system and one of the largest employers in the county where it’s located.
“Consistently, CAMC seems to do a great job of taking people [out] of the river and treating them and making them well, ” he told reporters. “What they don’t do is go upstream to see why there [are] so many people in the stream to begin with. “
Dave Ramsey, CEO of CAMC, responded to the accusations, saying he respectfully disagrees with Mr. Bryant’s assertion that the hospital isn’t doing enough to tackle the smoking problem in the community.
“Smoking is an issue that it’s not just the hospital’s responsibility, it’s the community’s responsibility as a whole, ” Mr. Ramsey said. “We’re a part of that community, we’re working with the Kanawha Coalition for Community health Improvement and we’ve been working with them on community health issues for more than 20 years, so we’re very much involved in the upriver sorts of wellness activity and population health.”
The tax increase at the heart of the disagreement is part of a bill recently passed by the West Virginia state Senate. The House of Delegates would have to pass the bill for it to become a law.
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CDC finds smoking rates are twice as high among Medicaid, uninsured populations
