Tom Harkin: “I thank the Presiding Officer. I thank my friend and colleague from Connecticut for his very excellent, profound…”

“I thank the Presiding Officer. I thank my friend and colleague from Connecticut for his very excellent, profound statement and for taking a leadership position on this very crucial issue. It is obviously well known I am retiring in 3 weeks. The Prevention and Public Health Fund of which the Senator spoke so eloquently just now is going to continue, and it is going to need people such as the Senator from the State of Connecticut to take that kind of leadership position. I believe people are catching on to it around the country, but there are still those who say: People get high blood pressure, they get borderline diabetes, they have high cholesterol. These things just sort of happen--sort of like they are preordained. Chronic diseases are not preordained. As the Senator said, 75 percent of the money we spent was accountable for preventable chronic diseases and conditions. As the Senator so rightly said, what we need to focus on is keeping people healthy, not paying for it later on when they are in the hospital. That is something that this Prevention and Public Health Fund is making strides on. People have perhaps a mistaken idea that health care only occurs in the doctor's office or in the exchange between doctor and patient or health care provider and patient. But we know that it takes place in all aspects of life--in the workplace, in the communities in which we live, in our schools, in our homes. It has to be something that is sort of pervasive in our society.…”