Yesterday marked the start of the final two weeks before the 2010 August Congressional recess begins. With all the legislative activity thus far this year, it’s hard to believe August is just around the corner and election season is fast approaching. I applaud Congress and the Obama Administration for their strong implementation efforts and wish them a restful recess in their home states.

While things will slow down a bit in Washington over the next month, I hope the nation continues talking about the implementation process and health care reform. As you know, I’m a strong advocate for disease prevention and wellness and here are a few data points I keep coming back to that make a strong case for increased access to preventive services, coordinated care and a strong public health education program.

• Increased care coordination in Medicare has the potential to significantly reduce health spending. Using transitional care models, such as Community Health Teams, have the potential to save $125 billion over 10 years in Medicare alone.
• The total annual economic cost of diabetes in 2007 was estimated to be $174 billion, according to the American Diabetes Association: $58 billion resulting from indirect costs (e.g., increased absenteeism, reduced productivity, disease-related unemployment disability, and loss of productive capacity due to early mortality) and $116 billion for direct medical costs.
• If obesity continues to increase at current rates, US spending on health care costs attributable to obesity is expected to quadruple by 2018 to $344 billion.

When Congress returns from recess in a few short weeks, I encourage them to pick up this conversation where they left off and continue to move full steam ahead with implementation.