The Clinton Health Matters Initiative (CHMI)

On Tuesday, President Clinton announced the newest William J. Clinton Foundation health care project with partners GE, Tenet Healthcare Corp, Verizon, and NBC/Universal. The Clinton Health Matters Initiative (CHMI) will “work to improve the health and well-being of people across the United States by developing and implementing a variety of evidence-based individual, systems, and investment strategies.” Most will remember President Clinton efforts to reform our health care system back when he was President and one of his last efforts was his call to eliminate health disparities by 2010. As we all know and can see that year has come and gone with little difference in our nations health disparities. As we have seem him do in other areas that he has publicly admitted not accomplishing what he wanted to while President, he is taking the task on in his private life with his very successful Foundation.

President Clinton points out that healthcare costs are more than 17% of our GDP compared to the next highest-spending countries, Germany and France, are only at 11 to 12 percent of their GDPs. And he add the “we’re not getting healthier”. This means that the health disparities problem is not only a moral and justice issue but we can’t ignore the economic impacts. In an interview on the subject Clinton states that if our healthcare costs fell 6% to those of Germany or France, the savings is just under $1 trillion. With that savings it “could be used for pay raises and education and technology investments.”

The Foundation and its partners are building a platform to help people make “small lifestyle changes that will improve their health in big ways”. They are also creating partnerships to influence every day health. On the web site, ClintonHealthMatters.org, you can sign up and take action. Sigh up for their email updates or share your health issues that matter and that you want to impact.

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