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Photo by Mike Yoder

Rod Bremby, Kansas secretary for health and environment, left, visits with Sherry Schaub after Bremby's presentation to the Lawrence Noon Rotary Club. Bremby discussed how individuals can improve their health, during the meeting Monday at the Lawrence Holidome, 200 McDonald Drive.

Kansas businesses can save big money on their health-insurance costs by spending a little money up front, the state's top health official says.

All for as little as $150 per employee.

"That's the breaking point," said Rod Bremby, Kansas secretary for health and environment.

Bremby's pitch is relatively simple.

Because 30 percent of Americans account for 90 percent of the country's $1.98 trillion in health care spending, he said, employers and others should focus on preventing health problems from surfacing in the first place.

One company, he said, had decided to conduct one-hour seminars for employees to educate them about heart disease and ways to prevent such problems. The seminars ran for eight weeks. At the end of the seminars, employees received an incentive: essentially $150 in gift cards.

The bottom line: The company - Bremby called it a major manufacturer - watched its health-care costs drop by 14 percent during each of the next three years, easily outpacing the cost of any lost production or the purchase of a relative handful of gift cards.

Bremby's message, discussed as part of a Lawrence Noon Rotary Club meeting Monday: Helping ease the pain of America's health care situation doesn't necessarily mean revamping health regulations, overhauling insurance procedures or reaching for drastic systematic changes that get various interest groups all riled up.

The best thing to do simply is to convince people to help themselves by changing behavior, he said:

¢ Eat five servings of fruits and vegetables each day.

¢ Take part in 30 minutes of physical activity at least three times a week.

¢ Avoid tobacco products.

"The solution is well within our reach," Bremby told about 110 Rotarians and their guests during lunch at the Lawrence Holidome.

Bremby purposefully opted to make the crowd feel a bit uncomfortable during his presentation, which includes slides of budgetary numbers, policy proposals and diagrams depicting an industry where prices continue to rise alongside the number of people living without insurance.

Looking out over tables of 10 people, he reminded them that of people at age 50 - who eat well and are close to their ideal body weight - one out of 10 will contract either coronary heart disease, suffer a stroke or get diabetes by age 65.

But 50-year-olds who don't eat well, don't exercise and do use tobacco see their chances of contracting such health problems rise to 58 percent by age 65.

"That's the person next to you," Bremby told the crowd. "It's you or them."

The message: Changing behavior - either for one's self, or to assist a company's employees - offers the best chance of cutting into health care spending, Bremby said, by reducing the chances of people contracting the problems that cause so much health spending in the first place.

"An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure," he said.