TFAH Applauds 'Affordable Health Choices Act' for Making Prevention a Cornerstone of Hea...( WASHINGTON June 10 -- Trust for Amer...),Health

WASHINGTON, June 10 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Trust for America's Health (TFAH) today applauded the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) for including strong prevention and public health components in the Affordable Health Choices Act to improve the health of Americans.

"Our nation will never be able to contain health care costs until we do a better job of keeping Americans healthier and preventing disease," said Jeff Levi, Ph.D., Executive Director of TFAH. "The HELP Committee should be commended for making disease prevention and public health cornerstones of health reform -- which would help spare millions of Americans from needless suffering and save the health system billions of dollars in preventable costs. The Affordable Health Choices Act goes a long way toward transforming the country's current sick care system to a system that keeps people healthier in the first place."

"Prevention holds the promise of improving health and quality of life while lowering health care costs. This bill includes the ingredients needed to ensure we get the returns that prevention offers, including a focused national prevention strategy, a sustained public health funding stream, and evidence-based programs that will be held accountable for improving health outcomes," Levi continued.

Americans rank prevention as the most important health care reform priority, and more than three-quarters of Americans (76 percent) support increasing funding for prevention programs that provide people with information and resources and creating policies that help people make healthier choices, according to a new poll released this week conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research and Public Opinion Strategies. Investing in prevention is popular across the political spectrum, with 86 percent of Democrats, 71 percent of Republicans, and 70 percent of Independents supporting investing more in prevention.
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