Gov. Richardson: seniors health plan and plan to battle obesity.

Richardson emphasizes house calls, streamlined care, enhanced quality, and voluntary participation

DAVENPORT, IA-- At the Divided We Fail Presidential Candidate Forum tonight in Davenport, Iowa, New Mexico Governor and Democratic Presidential candidate Bill Richardson announced an innovative approach to health care policy that specifically addresses the priorities of senior citizens.

"Senior citizens want to be able to live out their lives with dignity and in their own homes," Governor Richardson said. "They want to make key health care decisions in conjunction with their doctor, not a third party. We are talking about our mothers and our fathers, the people that won World War II, dug the country out of the Great Depression, and sacrificed in countless ways to provide us with a better future. What they desire is not asking too much."

The Richardson-endorsed "Independence at Home" plan emphasizes streamlined, in-home, and coordinated health care. This program, based on the "House Calls" model run successfully for years by physicians at the American Academy of Home Care Physicians, would come under Medicare with considerable savings. It is entirely voluntary but highly popular with patients and physicians and likely to be rapidly adopted.

"My plan would replace the 13 different physicians that a large fraction of seniors have running their health care with one health care team," Governor Richardson said. "It provides care at home, with house calls aided by modern technology, so quality of care is maintained. It would save about $13 to 16 billion annually by reducing emergency room visits and hospital admissions, and through incentives to improve quality and save money."

The current health care delivery system is based on a 1960s model that does not provide incentives for integrated care or care in lower cost settings. Sixty-six (66%) percent of Medicare’s costs are associated with spending on beneficiaries with 5 or more chronic conditions. These beneficiaries see an average of 13 different physicians and fill an average of 50 different prescriptions a year.

"I applaud Governor Richardson’s insight for endorsing a real change in health care for older Americans that will make a difference in their lives," said Alan P. Abrams, MD, MPH, Program Director of the Geriatric Fellowship at Harvard Medical School. "Governor Richardson's support for the Independence at Home program is a major leap forward to achieve the highest quality of life for chronically ill Americans in their homes, with dignity, and without any restrictions on access to the highest quality health care."

Governor Richardson made clear that he has the experience to change the health care system for senior citizens. "I’ve done this in another context in New Mexico, and we now rank third in the nation in the percentage of health care dollars applied to care in the community, versus care in institutions," Governor Richardson said.

"With Independence at Home, access to health care is easy, because the doctor comes to the patient. The plan of care is developed together with the patient. That’s what we can do. That’s what seniors want. As President, that’s what I pledge to deliver."

To further strengthen preventive health care for seniors, Richardson also pledged to improve coverage of preventive services for more than one million seniors who currently receive care at community health centers. The Medicare program currently does not reimburse adequately for lifesaving preventive services, including mammograms, colorectal and prostate cancer screenings, offered by these centers.

"Investing in prevention pays off-- it saves dollars and more importantly it saves lives," said Richardson. "It is wrong to allow people to become critically ill when simple preventive care could have made a difference."

Our next President must take a prominent and public role, joining all of you in your efforts, to increase the public's understanding of obesity and remove the stigma. We must help people understand that it is a disease, not a behavior. And that those of us who are overweight or obese are NOT lazy or undisciplined. We cannot allow Americans to be taken in by the easy comfort of stereotypes.
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As President, I will work with Congress to include federal protections for the obese in the Americans for Disabilities Act and by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

We need to dramatically boost our research efforts associated with obesity and we need to involve the NIH, CDC, FDA, USDA, and others. The more we know about obesity, the more we know how to prevent and treat it. It is imperative that we better understand what works to help overweight and obese people improve their health.

Perhaps the most critical part of what our next President must do, however, is to drastically shift our focus from the endgame to the pre-game. That means a serious investment in prevention. A wise man once said that "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of the cure." Apparently, this age-old wisdom has not yet made its way to Washington.

I noticed that none of the other presidential candidates are here today. I know they may not weigh as much as I do, but I still think you should have invited them.