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Medicare News
Medicare Preventive Care for Senior Citizen Men is
Topic of Podcast
Former HHS Sec. Tommy Thompson
is on MensHealthNetwork.com
September 28, 2006 – Encouraging senior citizen men
to increase their use of the services provided by Medicare to prevent
illness is the first topic in a series of audio podcasts being made by
Tommy Thompson, former Secretary of Health and Human Services and
Governor of Wisconsin. This first of installments planned each Thursday
is available today. The program is named "Medicare's Preventative
Services."
The podcast, which is hosted on the Men's Health
Network Web site,
www.menshealthnetwork.org, was created to increase seniors' use of
the currently underutilized prevention services offered by Medicare.
In the first episode released today, Secretary
Thompson provided an overview of Medicare's preventative care services
and reviewed the benefits of practicing preventative care. "I really
believe if you're really going to have an impact on the healthcare
system in America, you have to get the information out to individuals at
an earlier stage, before they get sick, so that people can find ways to
use the preventative healthcare system to improve their health and,
therefore, their quality of life," said Thompson.
In the podcast, Thompson references startling
spending statistics of the Medicare program and suggests that these
numbers could be reduced through practicing preventative care.
"A Medicare analysis that used data from 2001,
found that the program paid nearly 13 billion dollars that year for
potentially preventable hospitalizations for a variety of illnesses,"
said Thompson.
"We can do better than that in America and we can
reduce those chronic illnesses and we can also use the excess money that
we save into continuing to improve the quality of health care systems in
America."
"I sincerely hope that all seniors out there and
especially caregivers who are listening to this program will use the
preventative healthcare services that are currently available in
Medicare," said Thompson.
"I can assure you if you do so, you will save costs
and also improve your quality of life. And that, of course, is what the
ultimate objective for Medicare and its programs are all about."
Thompson is now a partner at the law firm of Akin
Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, LLP, and is the independent chairman of the
new Deloitte Center for Health Care Solutions. In his role at the
Center, Secretary Thompson says he is partnering with some of the
world's foremost experts to develop innovative solutions to the health
care challenges facing American families, businesses, communities,
states and the nation as a whole.
His podcast is sponsored by Men's Health Network
and Pfizer Inc.
For more information about the preventive care
services offered by Medicare, visit
http://www.medicare.gov/.
For further information about Tommy Thompson's
podcast, Medicare's Preventive Services, or to download other podcast
episodes, please visit the Men's Health Network Web site at
www.menshealthnetwork.org/
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