ACC's initiative for health care reform

Oct 27 2009

As lawmakers debate health care reform, business innovator Lou Weisbach and Clinton White House health care advisor Dr. Richard Boxer are available for interviews to discuss a glaring, missing element of the forthcoming health care legislation: reducing health care costs -- and saving lives -- by preventing and curing disease.

The chilling reality is that the percentage of Americans who die of cancer today is unchanged from 1950. There is nothing in current health care reform legislation that provides for real change in the way we approach health care in our country.

Weisbach and Boxer want to change that: they are co-creators of The American Center for Cures (ACC) initiative, which proposes that a "Manhattan Project" or "Moon Shot"-like urgency be applied to cure or prevent disease. Their idea is revolutionary: the creation of The ACC -- led by a cabinet-level Director of the Cures -- housed within the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The ACC's mission: to cure a minimum of three diseases within the next seven years.

The ACC concept has support from numerous lawmakers and health care experts, as well as citizens who are signing a petition at www.americancenterforcures.org to have the initiative included in health care reform legislation.

Weisbach and Boxer can discuss the following topics:

• Chronic diseases affect more than 110 million Americans.
• Chronic disease care accounts for nearly 75% of the more than $2.1 trillion spent on health care in the U.S.
• The ACC will create a unified, global mission to cure disease.
• Each disease of focus will have a CEO accountable for a cure.
• Diseases for focus -- chosen by a "Cures Council" -- may likely focus on Alzheimer's, Autism, various types of cancer, Crohn's disease, depression, Diabetes, Epilepsy, Multiple Sclerosis, Parkinson's, and genetic diseases of childhood (such as Cystic Fibrosis).