How to End America's 'Sick Care' System

Recently, Sen. Tom Harkin was asked to lead a working group given the task of crafting the prevention and public-health components of President Obama's health-care-reform bill. As chairman of the subcommittee on appropriations and health, he's in a position to have a pivotal role in tackling the immense challenges the nation faces in this area. He spoke with me about his vision for health-care reform. Excerpts:

Dean Ornish: Why you are so passionate about preventive health care?

Tom Harkin: I want to lay down a marker right here at the outset of America's great debate about national health-care reform: if we pass a bill that greatly extends health-insurance coverage but does nothing to create a dramatically stronger prevention and public-health infrastructure and agenda, then we will have failed. I have long believed that prevention and wellness are the keys to solving our health-care crisis. We must recreate America as a "wellness society" focused on fitness, good nutrition and disease prevention--ultimately, keeping people out of the hospital in the first place. You paved the way for a lot of people, and this is something I have been laboring on for a long time.

We don't have a health-care system in America; we have a "sick care" system. The problem is that this current system is all about patching things up after the fact. We spend untold hundreds of billions [of dollars] on pills, surgery, hospitalization and disability. But we spend peanuts--about 3 percent of our health-care dollars--for prevention.

When President Obama recently introduced former senator Tom Daschle as the new secretary of health and human services, he said, "Now, some may ask how at this moment of economic challenge, we can afford to invest in reforming our health-care system. But I ask a different question. I ask, 'How can we afford not to?'"

Every year, we keep putting more money into high-tech, very expensive remedial things. And yet, we know there are better, safer, more cost-effective ways of dealing with many of our chronic illnesses.

Heart disease is a good example. More than $30 billion were spent last year on angioplasties, yet randomized trials clearly show that they don't prolong life or even prevent heart attacks for most people. In contrast, studies show that most heart disease is completely preventable today, simply by changing lifestyle. My colleagues and I have shown that heart disease is usually reversible by changing lifestyle. So, why has it been so hard to reform health care?

It's been so hard because the deck is stacked, socially and economically, against the kind of preventive measures that are cost-effective and that evidence has shown work. From the earliest time, our kids are led into eating unhealthy foods.

I'm encouraged that some of the large companies, like PepsiCo, are finding that it's good business to make healthier foods, which makes it sustainable. What can we do to encourage kids to eat more healthfully?

We can start at the earliest times in a child's life, like the Women, Infants and Children's Program, to make sure that mothers get healthier foods. This next year coming up is the reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act, and that's under my jurisdiction. Making sure that kids in the Head Start Programs get early education and information about what is healthy and what is good and have healthy snacks for them, too. In 2002, I took a few million dollars and I started a free fresh fruit and vegetable snack program in schools. My theory was this: if kids could get a fresh piece of fruit or vegetable for free, they would eat it. And if they would eat it, they wouldn't get the "growlies" and wouldn't be rushing to vending machines or eating cookies. People always say, "Well, we will put a couple of apples or oranges in the vending machines," but kids aren't going to buy that with their money. But if you give it to them free, they will eat it.