Parkersburg News & Sentinel - McKinley holds community roundtable

News Article

By Michael Erb

Rep. David McKinley, R-W.Va., met with area officials and business leaders Monday as part of a series of community roundtable discussions.

Monday morning McKinley met with city and county officials at the Parkersburg Municipal Building in downtown Parkersburg to discuss areas of need and concern for Wood County and its municipalities. McKinley also held a business roundtable Monday afternoon at the Blennerhassett Hotel.

At the morning session, officials discussed topics ranging from grant applications and reviews to flood insurance and funding for state-owned roads.

A good portion of the talk revolved around the area's drug problem, an issue which is not unique to Wood County and which has plagued people throughout the state and region. McKinley said he favors creation of a national prescription drug database which would prevent people from "pill shopping," or getting multiple prescriptions to fill at multiple locations.

McKinley said current federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPPA, often prevents the sharing of information between states when it comes to prescription pills. A national registry could help lower those hurdles.

McKinley said the Veterans Administration is believed to be the number one prescriber of pain killers in West Virginia, but the agency is not required to keep records on those prescriptions.

"We need a true determination of how much pain medication is in West Virginia," he said. "We're trying to figure out a way to get that reported."

Officials said more needs to be done to lessen the number of painkillers being prescribed to people, which can often lead to abuse or illegal sales.

"I don't think we can do it all legislatively," McKinley said. "There needs to be an education component, to get doctors to stop prescribing so many pills."

McKinley said the United States has among the highest rate of overdoses in the world, about ten times the number of overdose deaths in Europe and double that of Canada.

"How we handle pain in America is not very good," he said.

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