Kay Bailey Hutchison: “I rise today with Senator Nelson to introduce an important piece of legislation that will dramatically improve the…”

“I rise today with Senator Nelson to introduce an important piece of legislation that will dramatically improve the quality of diabetes care under the Medicare program. Diabetes is a serious, debilitating chronic illness that afflicts more than 18 million Americans, including eight million Medicare beneficiaries. An additional eight million seniors suffer from a condition known as ``pre-diabetes'' that, when left untreated, will develop into diabetes. Diabetes' devastating complications--kidney failure, blindness, lower extremity amputation, heart disease and stroke--result in significant costs to the program. Although beneficiaries with diabetes comprise only 20 percent of the Medicare population, diabetes related complications account for more than 30 percent of medicare expenditures. This is indeed troubling, and there is much that can be done to reduce the burden of diabetes and prevent these costly complications. Diabetes self-management training, DSMT, helps people with diabetes learn the skills they need to manage the daily regimen of diet, exercise, meal planning, medication and monitoring necessary to keep blood sugar under control.”