Thursday, May 21, 2009

GOP: Prevention & Wellness

I attended a briefing this morning hosted by the U.S. Senate Republican Policy Committee, "GOP Health Care Hearing: Prevention Through Healthy Behavior - A Key to Health Care Reform." The briefing room included two signs: 1) "Healthy Living Through Wellness & Prevention;" and "Healthy Living: Lowering Health Care Costs." I must confess to spending maybe a little too much time wondering if i could pull off wearing the signs as a sandwich board around Capitol Hill.

The briefing was on message, including high praise for financial wellness incentives from Governor Huckabee, Steve Burd (CEO of Safeway), and Dr. Andrew Baldwin (try googling him if you want to feel inadequate). The Senators in attendance (Senator Alexander, R-Tenn; Senator Ensign, R-Nev; Senator Thune, R-SD, Senator Burr, R-NC, and WHIP Co-Champion...Senator Cornyn - R-TX) seemed to agree. In fact, the executive summary distributed by the Policy Committee noted that health care reform should include "clarifying tax rules to make clear that any incentives provided in connection with wellness programs are not taxable income."

The health care reform debate includes many contentious issues, but the importance of prevention and wellness does not seem to be one of them. It's the perfect post-partisan issue! Tell your legislators about it here.

- Tom Richards

2 comments:

  1. This is encouraging news. Let's hope that
    1) We can come up with a bipartisan health reform effort that will pass the house and senate.
    2) Prevention is an integral part of that package and programs like those you mention are funded and not cut.

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