U.S. Representative Michael Burgess (R-Texas) and U.S. Delegate Donna Christensen (D-U.S. Virgin islands) alerted Congressional colleagues today to a powerful new tool for quantifying and scoring the value of preventative health and health risk reduction programs.

Burgess and Christensen are co-sponsoring “The Preventative Health Savings Act” (H.R. 3148), which would direct the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to investigate the potential savings to Medicare, which could be gained through an enhanced government and healthcare industry focus on disease prevention. (See accompanying document.)

In support of the legislation, the two issued a letter to all colleagues today, drawing attention to a landmark study published recently by the Center for Health Research at Healthways, Inc. - Potential Medicare Savings Through Prevention & Health Risk Reduction - which predicts that government investment in programs and solutions aimed at improving the health and well-being of Americans, both before and after entry into Medicare, could yield up to $1.4 trillion in savings over 10 years. Those savings would still accrue even taking into account increases in longevity associated with preventing or slowing health risk progression.

The Preventative Health Savings Act would require the CBO to take the comprehensive actuarial model used in the study, a model developed and tested by Ingenix Consulting, to conduct an initial analysis to confirm Healthways’ predictions. The CBO would then be required to include an estimate and description of those future-year savings in its budget projections.

"It's time for the CBO to capture and consider what doctors have long known," said Congressman Burgess, a physician himself. "Long-term risk prevention and wellness programs lead to healthier Americans, and that's why we've introduced the Preventative Health Savings Act. Utilizing the Healthways-Ingenix model, we can show Americans, in hard dollars and sense, that these initiatives save money. Unfortunately, the current CBO scoring process does not give Congress a complete picture on preventive health, as its long-term benefits are not fully reflected, if at all, in current cost estimates."

"Supply-side initiatives, focused on adjustments to payment, coverage, manpower and facilities policy, cannot curb the growth rate of healthcare costs alone," said Delegate Christensen, also a physician. "To bend the healthcare cost curve, we must also focus on the demand-side and slow the pace of health risk progression. That means preventing people from becoming sick in the first place, helping them reduce or delay their risk factors and better manage chronic conditions after they occur. An ounce of prevention really may be worth a pound of cure.