PETITION CLOSED

  • The time period for signing this petition has ended.
Tell Senator Coburn: Hands off Prevention Funding
  1. Signatures
    118 out of 200
    Petitioning
    1. The OK State Senate
  2. Created By
    Brie Cadman
    Charlottesville, VA
About this Petition Petition Letter Petition Updates

Oklahoma Republican Senator Tom Coburn recently spoke out against funding for the 2011 Prevention and Public Health Fund. This fund provides crucial resources to implement programs to promote smoking cessation, increase physical activity and improved nutrition, among other things. It strengthens communities, prevents disease and provides a sustainable method to ensure health over the long term.

Our society faces unprecedented challenges when it comes to containing health care costs, and prevention is the most logical, cost-effective way to address the issues. Yet Coburn, a medical doctor, is after the $750 million for the Public Health and Prevention Fund, saying it is a “slush fund.” But the amount pales in comparison to the over $160 billion that chronic diseases cost the U.S. annually.

Coburn is targeting the fund not because it’s good policy, but because he’s playing politics, trying by whatever means possible to defund the health care reform law.

Don’t let partisan politics take the place of smart, effective policy. Tell Coburn to keep his hands of prevention funding by signing the petition below. 

Why People Are Signing
Recent Signatures

Senator Coburn: Hands Off Prevention and Public Health Fund

Greetings,

Recently, you spoke out against the Prevention and Public Health Fund, calling it a “slush fund.” In reality, the Fund helps support programs that save money over the long-term and make sense from an economic and pragmatic stand point. Surely, as a medical doctor, you realize the savings inherent in prevention. In your own state, almost half the population is overweight, and prevention is desperately needed.

While your aim is to thwart the implementation of the health care law, going after prevention funding is all about politics, and not about good policy. In addition, the majority of the public health and disease prevention programs that are funded in the House spending measure predate the health overhaul, so much of your rhetoric falls flat.

We ask that you end your baseless attack against the Fund and maintain the entire portion of funding for the Prevention and Public Health Fund.

[Your name]

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