Event Archive
Ohio PFCD travels to Washington to discuss Chronic Disease Prevention with Members of Congress
June 9, 2009
The Ohio Chapter of the Partnership to Fight Chronic Disease (PFCD) with a few of its partner organizations visited Washington DC on Tuesday, June 9 to meet with members of Ohio's Congressional delegation and their staff to discuss the impact that chronic illness such as obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, hypertension, breathing disorders and depression on our current system of health care.
Representatives from the Cleveland Clinic, the Ohio Dietetic Association, the Ohio Osteopathic Association and the Ohio Academy of Family Physicians met with Congressional members and/or their health legislative aides to share that chronic illnesses are the number one driver of health costs in America, taking 75 cents of every dollar spent on health care.
Meaningful reform focuses on improving health by addressing the primary driver of disability, death, and rising costs: chronic disease. Only by tackling the issue of chronic disease head-on can we hope to improve our nation’s health, and make progress in our health care system and – just as importantly – our economy.
Health reform should include a broad view of chronic disease prevention that takes advantage of the opportunities for health improvements at all stages. That includes lowering risks of developing disease; detecting disease and intervening early; and managing disease to avoid complications.
Any effort to reform health care must empower and motivate Americans to improve their health.
Public policies should help people: lower their risk factors for developing a disease – by encouraging a healthy diet, physical activity, and other healthy changes such as quitting smoking; catch disease early – by monitoring their health, visiting a physician regularly and getting recommended preventive tests and screenings; and, managing their diseases adequately to prevent costly complications – by following their health care providers’ recommendations for lifestyle changes, taking their medications as prescribed, and following up when needed.
Public policies must lower barriers - including financial barriers - to empower and motivate people to take action. For example, evidence shows that lowering the amount of out-of-pocket costs faced by patients can ensure a higher level of compliance with recommended lifestyle changes, diet modification, and medication use.
To cut down on wasteful spending and improve quality of care, policies must facilitate care coordination among providers and managing transitions between care settings -- from hospital to home, for example --to avoid readmissions and other costly complications.
Health care reform will require many difficult choices. We understand how critical CBO scoring will be to making these choices, and how important it is that Members of Congress have the best information available.
We have recommendations for ways to enhance CBO scoring for health care reform proposals that include: incorporating disease-specific trends into the baseline and projections based on research on chronic disease development and progression (e.g., obesity and other health status trends to more accurately reflect current health status and how proposed policies may affect those trends); recognize that investments in health improvement may take more than 10 years to show their full value and allow for opportunities to have a longer timeframe of analysis; and include, as supplementary information, analysis of the broader economic implications (e.g., productivity gains, reductions in disability, workforce)
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