Workplace Calisthenics: Economy, lifestyle balance against health concerns

Cal LeMon, of Executive Enrichment Inc., solves organizational problems with customized training and consulting.

The greatest, single threat to your employment is this: you arrive at work, boot-up your computer, get a cup of coffee and get in line to have your temperature taken. You may not be able to earn a living today unless your body temperature is 100.1 or lower.

If you think that is a weird, wacko description of your workday future read the news.

As a result of SARS, people in the Far East have been queing up at the doors to restaurants, churches, government offices and workplaces to await the insertion of an ear thermometer to find out if they medically "qualify" to be with other people. One number too high and quarantine is the next stop.

Our shared futures have been unfolding in small, video clips for years, and the awfulness is mind numbing.

Let's glue these facts together.

First is the threat of terrorism including biological and radiological attacks that most medical professionals admit this nation is not capable of handling. Can you imagine the impact on the two major hospitals in Springfield if about 10,000 people showed up, at the same time, for immediate medical care?

Second, there are strains of diseases that are becoming immune to our best, and proven, antidotes. SARS has baffled us. We expected some scientist, somewhere, to invent the right serum for a quick injection that would take care of this messy medical problem. It still has not happened.

Let's add SARS to ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease), AIDS, pancreatic cancer, some sexually transmitted diseases and the common cold on a growing list of diseases to which our best response, right now, is to quarantine or make the patient comfortable.

Third, the boomers are exploding into the emergency rooms with a vengeance. The number of visits to this nation's emergency rooms rose by 20 percent over the past decade. The majority of those walking through the automatic doors are those born prior to 1945. Also, the number of emergency departments in hospitals declined by 15 percent during the same 10 years.

Fourth, there is a national shortage of nurses that is expected to endure for the next 15 years.

Fifth, the No. 1 concern of employees, according to the Society for Human Resource Management, is to find a job that has "adequate medical benefits."

Finally, there are more than 45 million people in this nation who have no medical insurance or coverage. This means that those of us who are paying monthly premiums are paying for ourselves and at least three other people who cannot afford the services we are receiving.

Paste all this information together and it gets very scary. Yet this society and government has responded with atrophy.

The greatest single threat to the world economy is a medical catastrophe. Ask the people who live in the Far East and Canada. The economic powerhouses of Hong Kong and Toronto screeched to a halt when SARS showed up.

As a frequent traveler, I was thinking twice about getting on an airplane with people who were hacking around me in the departure lounge. My world started getting very small when I measured business against the personal threat of working with people who may make me sick.

It is time for the politicians to stop the partisan bickering over prescription benefits and Medicare reform. Our medical care system needs a heart transplant. We must, as a nation, provide some equitable and affordable form of health care to everyone. We all are paying for our avoidance of this pain.

It is time for workplaces to insist on healthy lifestyles as a condition for employment.

It is time for this nation to allocate one-quarter of the monies we spend for national defense to finding cures for the diseases that are killing us in record numbers.

And it is time for us to make sure a number on a thermometer is not the guarantee of a paycheck this week.