Andy Harris: “I thank the gentleman from Arizona for yielding me some time today. Mr. Speaker, to those who see the gentleman…”

“I thank the gentleman from Arizona for yielding me some time today. Mr. Speaker, to those who see the gentleman virtually every week come up here and talk about the economics of the United States and our debt problems and things like that, today, we will take a little different view because we are going to talk about something that doesn't just have to do with economics; it has to do with providing a healthier America. An America where, yes, we would save money if we were healthier, but the other benefits are so tremendous. We are not doing this just because we want to save money; we are doing this because we think this is actually the right approach for Americans. If you look at the cost of healthcare, about 70 percent is to take care of chronic diseases and the big chronic diseases are hypertension, diabetes, and obesity. They are the big chronic diseases. Cancer is not a chronic disease. It is an acute disease. It is the chronic diseases that are costing literally hundreds of billions of dollars to the United States. Today, we are going to focus on obesity. Now, hopefully in the future, we will focus on diabetes, maybe on hypertension. The reason why it is so important to start with these three is that the amount of spending, as the gentleman indicates, is tremendous. I am going to pull some data from this study from the Milken Institute. It is called America's obesity crisis.…”