Candidates on Wellness and Prevention

We believe wellness and prevention efforts, including changes in personal behavior such as diet and exercise, should be top national priorities.

The bolded candidate is listed first, then the statement we identified for the candidate. In some cases, we may not have identified a statement for the Divided We Fail principle listed above.

Republicans

Mike Huckabee

"We do need to get serious about preventive health care instead of chasing more and more dollars to treat chronic disease, which currently gobbles up 80% of our health care costs, and yet is often avoidable. The result is that we'll be able to deliver better care where and when it's needed. I advocate policies that will encourage the private sector to seek innovative ways to bring down costs and improve the free market for health care services. We have to change a system that happily pays $30,000 for a diabetic to have his foot amputated, but won't pay for the shoes that would save his foot." (Campaign website, October 2, 2007)

John McCain

"Childhood obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure are all on the rise. We must again teach our children about health, nutrition and exercise - vital life information. Public health initiatives must be undertaken with all our citizens to stem the growing epidemic of obesity and diabetes, and to deter smoking."
(Campaign website, October 11, 2007) http://www.johnmccain.com/Inf...7cf.htm

"Insurance companies should have incentives not only for them, but also for the people they insure for incentives to wellness and fitness, and they should be concrete, even in the form of cash payments for people, including payments even to health club fees…" (AARP Republican Candidate Forum, Sioux City, Iowa, October 25, 2007)

Ron Paul

"Decisions about nutrition and treatment for living a healthy life need to be made in the home and in the examining room, not in Washington, DC, or in a pharmaceutical company's board room."
("Government prescription for health is bad medicine," Texas Straight Talk, January 19, 1998)

Mitt Romney

"One of the reasons we went after health care in my state was we had about a half a million people that didn't have health insurance. And we found that if they don't have health insurance, they are less likely to see a primary care physician - a family doctor - less likely to be diagnosed with something like high blood pressure or early stage diabetes or something of that nature, less likely to get medicines to keep those sicknesses in check, and therefore more likely to end up with a severe, acute condition that requires them to go to the hospital."
(Divided We Fail forum, Iowa state fair, August 11, 2007)

Democrats

Hillary Clinton

"My plan also has a prevention initiative, requiring the insurance industry and public programs like Medicare and Medicaid to promote wellness as well as treat illness and provide every American with comprehensive preventive care." (Universal Health Care Speech, September 17, 2007) "Senator Clinton would make it a condition of doing business with the Federal government that health plans would coordinate public spending on prevention across federal programs in the Department of Health and Human Services to maximize high-priority prevention. A public-private collaboration would ensure that prevention reaches beyond the health care system and into schools, workplace, supermarkets and communities through free provision of preventive benefits. It would enlist a new prevention workforce including pharmacists, church leaders and others..."
http://www.hillaryclinton.com/files/pdf/healthcarecosts.pdf

Barack Obama

We all know the saying that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. But today we're nowhere close to that ounce... The problem is, there's currently no financial incentive for health care providers to offer services that will encourage patients to eat right or exercise or go for annual check-ups... The real profit today is made in treating diseases, not preventing them. That's wrong, which is why in our new national health care plan… we will require coverage of evidence-based, preventive care services, and make sure they are paid for. But in the end, prevention only works if we take responsibility for our own health and make the right decisions in our own lives. (Speech in Iowa City, IA, 5/29/07).

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