CHARLESTON — Senate Majority Leader Tom Takubo, who is also a pulmonologist, supports a bill that would establish a tax credit for physicians who locate to West Virginia to practice medicine.
Takubo, R-Kanawha, spoke in favor of SB208 as it advanced from the Senate Health and Human Resources Committee on Tuesday afternoon. The bill is also assigned to consideration by the Senate Finance Committee.
“This would be one way that if a person comes back to the state, it may be an incentive enticing them to come back,” Takubo said during the committee meeting.
Establishing medical practice is such a lengthy, involved process, he said, that if West Virginia can encourage early-career physicians to remain in the state for five years or so then they may be inclined to stay even longer.
“Chances are you’ve probably got a spouse, home, kids in school, et cetera, and good chance we keep them for life after that.”
Takubo is the lead sponsor of the bill. He maintains a clinical practice in the Kanawha Valley and is also executive vice president of provider relations for the WVU Health System.
The introduced version finds that West Virginia “suffers from a tremendous lack of physicians practicing within our state. This creates a crisis in the delivery of health care services to one of the unhealthiest populations in the nation.
“As a state, we need to seek ways to attract qualified physicians to locate here to provide our citizens necessary health care services and to promote the general good health of this state.”
The bill says a taxpayer eligible for a credit must be an eligible physician licensed in West Virginia and may be a graduate of an accredited allopathic or osteopathic medical school located anywhere in the United States.
The credit amounts to the physician’s personal taxable income. The bill may be claimed for three consecutive years. If the bill becomes law, the tax credit would become effective in 90 days.
During the health committee meeting, officials acknowledged asking for information about the bill’s financial effect on the state. That information wasn’t ready yet, though.
The committee took up and advanced a substitute bill that made a few changes to clarify the definition of eligible taxpayers, to explicitly encourage residency in West Virginia and adding a provision that the physician practice in a medically underserved or health professional shortage area.
Another change would impose a repayment obligation on physicians who receive the tax credit but who do not live in West Virginia for at least six years after that.
“I think this is an incredibly important bill,” Takubo told the committee. “I’ve had the opportunity to speak to medical students from all three medical schools in the state. The burden of medical education is getting to be to the point that it’s starting to preclude people from even getting into the practice of medicine.
“Average cost, students are telling me, is $300,000 to $350,000 coming out so interest is accruing while you’re then having to go through three to seven years of residency, depending on what type of specialty you go into and then by the time interest accrues on to top of that it just makes it incredibly difficult.”
