We’ve got to make Maine the healthiest state in America

If I was running for Governor of Maine – which I will not be because my mom will not let me play Governor of the Mountain with the other kids – my campaign slogan would be “Get off your Maine butt and help me make Maine the healthiest state in America.” That would be my entire campaign (which is why my mom is smart not letting me play).

Regardless of who ends up governor this November, their goal and ours should be for Maine to have the sleekest gams in America, the best cholesterols, the fastest teenagers, the fewest smokers and grannies who can whup any other state’s grannies in arm wrestling and power walking. It should be to have the lowest rates of diabetes, heart disease and obesity. And it should be our goal to do all of this in the next 10 years. Period, end of campaign, and the rest of the candidates can pack it in and just apply for jobs in my cabinet.

Before you write me off as Governor Wing Nut (actually, that is Governor Doctor Wing Nut to you), ask yourself this question – what other choice does Maine have but to be the healthiest state in America? We cannot afford less; if states were socio-economic storms, Maine would be the perfect socio-economic storm. We are one of the poorest states in the country, but have among the highest health care costs. Those costs are doubling about every 10 years, a rate that is eating Maine’s economy and state budget alive.

We are geographically hanging out there in the Arctic breeze, far from where most people want to live and work. We have an industrial base hanging by a moose hair with good jobs leaving all of the time, and our population is older than the national average. Other than all of that, the news about how attractive Maine is as a place to do business is all great.

What’s the answer? We have to be able to sell Maine as a place that businesses want to come to and can afford to stay in, and the way to do that is to provide current and potential employers with the healthiest, best- educated work force in the country. (How to make ours the best-educated population is a column for someone else to write.) That will make Maine a very competitive place to do business, because we will have an educated work force that is much cheaper for businesses to provide with health insurance.

Consider what it would do to our ability to sell Maine as a place to do business if Maine had:

. rates of diabetes and adult smoking that were half the national averages, since we know smokers and diabetics on a company’s work force significantly increase a company’s health care costs;

. one-third the rate of overweight adults that the rest of the country has, since we know that being overweight is one of the most important causes of disease;

. a population that exercised regularly at more than twice the rate of other Americans, since we know that exercising regularly is the most effective way to keep healthy.

If we did that I think businesses would be lining up to open their doors in Maine. We would be sitting back (after exercising that day, of course) and having them tell us what they can do to be chosen to come here, rather than Maine going begging to them. With those employers will come the jobs to keep our children here, to pay taxes, to provide health insurance, and to make a future for Maine that is not just based on selling lobsters to New Yorkers while they shop in Freeport.

Why does Maine have to do this? Let’s be honest; we must because Maine has too little to offer employers that means enough in today’s global economy. Yes, we have hard-working Maine people, but Georgia and Connecticut have hard-working people too, and they are cheaper to insure and therefore employ. Yes, we have natural beauty, but so do Arkansas and California, and people there do not have to wear six layers of clothing in February (five if you wear your same long johns all winter, because then they count as skin).

Yes, we have access to seaports, but so do many other states. We have artistic talent in abundance, but that and location may support Blue Hill but not all of Maine. And yes, we want jobs desperately, but so do the 280 million-plus Americans in 49 other states.

Bottom line: Maine needs to offer more than what we currently offer or we would not have our current problems maintaining a viable Maine economy. We may need a lot of other things too, but what we need most is to have the healthiest population in the country.

In order to succeed, the goal to have the healthiest population in America within 10 years must become the specific, cohesive, organized, goal of every town, school, business, governor, legislator, health insurance company, health care provider, and then every resident in the state. We must want to beat the healthy pants off the competition. The details of how to do it will follow that commitment from those cornerstones of Maine society. (This is not to ignore the devil of the details, but that is another column.)

It can be done. We only have 1.3 million people in this state. Three insurers cover the vast majority of Mainers; Medicaid, Medicare and Anthem. A few industries employ a large percentage of us; state and municipal governments, health care industry, schools and colleges, and the likes of Hannaford, L.L. Bean, Bath Iron Works, Cianbro, etc. We don’t have to change the minds of a lot of movers and shakers to provide the economic, organizational and social drive to make this happen. We must imagine what we could do, and get to it.

Sure, you can ask me what I am smoking if I think that we can make Maine America’s healthiest state, but smoke this reality first; we are scrod if we don’t and will perhaps secure our state’s economic future if we do. We don’t have time to just chew at the edges of our state economy’s problems with small ideas. Forget betting the future solely on wood products, seafood, tourism and everything else previously ever made in Maine; the most important product for Maine to make now is the healthiest, best-educated population in America. If we do that, good jobs will beat a path to Maine, rather than from it, and the rest of America will be cooking lobstahs for us while we take breaks from our shopping.

If we don’t do this, can the last person to leave Maine about 15 years from now please shut off the lights?

Erik Steele, D.O., a physician in Bangor, is chief medical officer of Eastern Maine Healthcare Systems and is on the staff of several hospital emergency rooms in the region.