Congressman Fitzpatrick

Washington, Sep 29 - Congressman Michael Fitzpatrick introduced legislation late yesterday to better prevent, diagnose, and treat diabetes among seniors in America. Fitzpatrick’s legislation, H.R. 6231, the “Catalyst to Better Diabetes Care Act” was introduced with Representative Ben Chandler, a Democrat from Kentucky.
“Diabetes is a silent epidemic in America,” Fitzpatrick said. “Over 20 million Americans have diabetes, costing our country over $132 billion a year. One in three children born today will develop diabetes, especially minority children. We must do a better job nationally to screen, prevent and treat this debilitating disease.”

“I traveled to Washington DC with my sister in law Linda this past May as an advocate for the American Diabetes Association,” said Hope McHenry, a resident of Buckingham.  “We met with Congressmen and Senators.  Mike Fitzpatrick greeted us with nothing but care and compassion.  He listened to us explain how my Dad, Charles W. McHenry, suffered through many complications of Diabetes and then passed away in 1998 at the early age of 56.  He caringly listened to what my family went through.  When I heard about this bill, I was overcome with emotion.  I believe Mike Fitzpatrick is going a step above and beyond by introducing this bill and helping all of us get one step closer to a cure.”

"Diabetes wreaks severe human and economic costs upon our country.  Representatives Fitzpatrick and Chandler have developed an approach that is both sensible and innovative.  This bipartisan legislation is an important step toward combating this epidemic," said Mary R. Grealy, President of the Healthcare Leadership Council.

According to William Rowley, MD with the Institute for Alternative Futures, today there are about 1,175,000 people with diabetes living in Pennsylvania alone, a 20 percent increase in the past 5 years. Thirty percent (352,000) do not know they have the disease, but it already is beginning to cause eye, kidney and heart damage for many of them. Unless we as a society aggressively address the twin epidemics of obesity and diabetes, this number will almost double to 2,296,000 in the next 20 years.

The “Catalyst to Better Diabetes Care Act” addresses five major diabetes issues:

• Save money and lives by reducing the enormous number of Medicare beneficiaries with undiagnosed diabetes through a cross-agency, collaborative patient and provider outreach program to increase utilization of the Medicare diabetes screening benefit.

• Track our progress toward beating diabetes by the creation of a National Diabetes Report Card, with corollary state information, which consists of aggregate health outcomes relative to the leading clinical measures of diabetes, as well as aggregate data on the complications of diabetes.

• Promote innovative private sector diabetes and other chronic disease wellness programs through a Department of Commerce-led best practices advisory group.

• Work toward a solution on the problem identified by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of the underreporting of diabetes on death certificates.

• Initiate a much-needed discussion on the impact of diabetes on the practice of medicine in the United States and our current level of diabetes medical education through an Institute of Medicine report.