On the recordJuly 31, 2012
I am pleased to join today with my colleagues, Senator Franken, Senator Lugar, Senator Collins, Senator Shaheen, Senator Wyden, Senator Blumenthal, and Senator Brown of Ohio, to introduce an important piece of bipartisan legislation, the Medicare Diabetes Prevention Act of 2012. Our legislation makes a wise investment in seniors' health by extending the proven success of the National Diabetes Prevention Program to Medicare. Nearly 26 million American adults have diabetes, and if this disturbing trend doesn't stop, over half of the adult population will either have Type 2 diabetes or its precursor, ``prediabetes,'' by 2020. Sadly, my home State of West Virginia has one of the highest diabetes rates in the Nation. In 2009, approximately 174,000 adults, which is 11 percent of West Virginia adults, had diabetes. According to Centers for Disease Control estimates, as many as 50 percent of the nearly 380,000 people with Medicare in West Virginia may be at risk of developing this serious, but preventable, illness. If current trends continue, one in three children born in West Virginia after the year 2000 will develop diabetes within his or her lifetime and people with diabetes risk developing terrible complications down the road, including heart disease, stroke, blindness, and amputations. Diabetes is also one of the main cost drivers in our health care system.…
