[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 102 (Friday, July 29, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: July 29, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                   THE PUBLIC HEALTH IMPROVEMENT ACT

  (Mr. MORAN asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. MORAN. Mr. Speaker, every day, we take for granted that the water 
we drink, the food we eat, and the air we breathe are not contaminated; 
that the food in our local restaurants is safe and that we are 
protected from communicable and infectious diseases. Yet, as a nation, 
we spend far less on these and other core public health activities that 
prevent disease, illness, disability, and injury than any other 
industrialized nation, and our patterns of morbidity and mortality 
reflect this. In fact, public health expenditures have decreased by 25 
percent relative to national health expenditures over the last decade.
  An estimated 70 percent of all health expenditures are attributed to 
preventable conditions. Yet, we continue to spend far more on costly 
curative treatment of these conditions than we do on prevention of 
them. Last year, we spent as much on treatment of preventable motor 
vehicle accident victims as we did on Medicare; the economic burden of 
preventable cardiovascular disease was greater than what the U.S. 
Government collected in corporate tax revenues.
  Today, I am introducing the ``Public Health Improvement Act.'' This 
bill promotes and finances prevention of illness and accidents and 
promotion of public health through two distinct approaches: it 
strengthens the capacity of local and state public health departments 
to carry out core functions, and it expands access to preventive and 
primary care services for vulnerable and medically underserved 
communities. This bill invests Federal dollars in the beginning years 
of life, and focuses on prevention, so that they'll be lives of quality 
rather than at the end of life, with its focus on the most costly of 
cures and procedures.
  Think how excited we would be over the impact of a new surgical 
treatment that would correct millions of cases of heart disease; a new 
drug that would cure an epidemic likely to infect millions of 
Americans; a new perinatal therapy that would help over thousands of 
low-birthweight babies survive. But we already have the knowledge to 
prevent the heart disease; to prevent the epidemic; to prevent the low 
birthweight baby--that is real health care progress; that is what our 
public health system has the potential to accomplish, and that is the 
crux of the Public Health Improvement Act. Expanding access to health 
insurance will not resolve the major public health problems facing our 
nation today, most of which are behavior-related. AIDS, substance and 
alcohol dependency, cardiovascular disease, accidents, violence, 
tobacco-related disease, and environmentally induced illnesses are 
outside the purview of the doctor's office. I urge my colleagues to 
focus on improving health status and reducing the economic burden of 
unnecessary illness and disease. I urge you to support the Public 
Health Improvement Act.

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