Published 4 March 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b898
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;338:b898

News

New US health bill must include prevention measures, senator says

Bob Roehr

1 Washington, DC

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Any new bill that greatly extends health insurance coverage but does nothing to implement a national prevention and wellness agenda would fail the American people, US senator Tom Harkin argued at a conference on public health in Washington, DC, on 25-27 February.

He castigated the current US healthcare system for spending "trillions for surgery, pills, hospitalisation, and disability, but peanuts for prevention—less than 5 cents on the dollar."

He told the summit on integrative medicine and the health of the public, which was sponsored by the Institute of Medicine: "[The system] is perfectly happy to reimburse $10 000 toward the cost of amputating a diabetic foot but refuses to spend several hundred dollars for nutrition counselling that might prevent diabetes.

"It is time to stop reimbursing on the basis of quantity and start reimbursing on the basis of quality."

Senator Harkin said it is essential that reform does not simply . . . [Full text of this article]


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to StumbleUpon StumbleUpon   Add to Technorati Technorati    What's this?

Rapid Responses:

Read all Rapid Responses

Will Americans continue to be "dollar wise" and "cent foolish"?
Paul O. Ola
bmj.com, 2 Jul 2009 [Full text]
Access jobs at BMJ Careers
Whats new online at Student BMJ