Friday, June 03, 2005
Mike Huckabee: Tip of Spear on Major National Issue
Governor Mike Huckabee is about to step into one of the most powerful bully pulpits in America, Chairman of the National Governor's Association, at a time when a critical issue important to him has moved to the forefront of the nation's domestic policy agenda.
That issue is health care.
On June 15, Huckabee, currently Vice-Chairman of the NGA, will join Chairman Mark Warner, Governor of Virginia, to testify before the U.S. Senate Finance Committee about Medicaid reform, launching the national debate on this issue.
The following month, at the NGA's annual meeting, Huckabee will take over as Chairman. In this role, he will help lead all 50 governors and congress through the critical and delicate process of reforming a program that provides health care for over 53 million low-income and disabled Americans.
Skyrocketing costs and swelling membership roles have driven state's Medicaid costs to levels beyond what they pay for K-12 public education, making it the single largest portion of states' budgets. The rate at which Medicaid is growing, if not slowed, threatens to bankrupt state governments or force large tax increases.
Mike Huckabee, a compassionate conservative, says the challenge is to allow states the flexibility they need to stem the program's exploding costs without cutting off vital medical care for millions of Americans.
But the health care issues facing America go far beyond making necessary reforms to existing medical care delivery programs like Medicaid and Medicare. Americans must reform themselves.
The fastest way to reduce national health care expenses is to reduce the need for health care in the first place. America faces a health crisis today called obesity. With over 65% of the population classified as overweight-to-obese, health care costs associated with diabetes, high cholesterol and blood pressure, knee surgeries and myriad other obesity-related costs are skyrocketing. Many, many of these costs are preventable and reducing them can save literally hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade alone.
Worse, obesity is running rampant among America's children, reducing their quality of life and literally threatening to shorten the lives of an entire generation for the first time in American history.
Governor Huckabee, a national role model and leader in wellness and health care, will use the Chairmanship of the NGA to tout his own personal story and his innovative Healthy Arkansas initiative that promotes wellness incentives for state employees. This program, parts of which have already been duplicated in other states, will serve as a model for the federal government, other states and ultimately private insurers and businesses around the country.
Governor Mike Huckabee is the right man, in the right place, at the right time to lead America through this urgent domestic policy agenda.
