The Nebraska Legislature continues to consider important issues related to heart and stroke care. Advocates are encouraged to take action on three alerts that can positively impact heart and stroke care in our state. Please take action!
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Telehealth
Please contact your state senator and ask him/her to support LB 92 related to telehealth services. Telehealth is the use of medical information exchanged from one site to another via electronic communications in order to improve a patient’s clinical health status. In a rural state like Nebraska, telehealth can dramatically improve access to high-quality health care.
Telehealth is a new method of enabling care delivery that has the potential to help transform the healthcare system, reduce costs, and increase quality and patient access.
Contact your Senator and encourage him or her to support LB 92. http://act.yourethecure.org/MyqRHMm
Palliative Care
Encourage your state senator to support legislation that helps patients and families face the long-term challenges and burden of advanced chronic cardiovascular disease (CVD) and stroke. Lack of understanding about palliative care remains one of the chief barriers of preventing access to it.
Palliative care is focused on providing relief from the symptoms and stress of a serious illness. The goal is to improve quality of life for both the patient and the family.
This legislation ensures that comprehensive and accurate information about palliative care is available to the public, health care providers, and health care facilities. http://act.yourethecure.org/XULspT0
Increase the Tobacco Tax
The time has come to increase the tobacco tax in Nebraska. The reason is simple: increasing the tobacco tax will save lives from tobacco-related illnesses, and it will save health care costs for our state.
It is estimated that by increasing the tobacco tax by $1.50 per pack of cigarettes, an estimated 11,300 of our youth will not become addicted to tobacco as adults. That means a significant reduction in long term tobacco-related chronic illnesses because citizens never started smoking in the first place.
It also means a significant savings in health care costs for our state. An estimated $795 million in annual health care costs in Nebraska is directly caused by smoking. $795 million every year!
Nebraska can do better. It’s been 15 years since our state has raised the tobacco tax, and Nebraska currently ranks 41st of 50 on tobacco tax rate. The time has come to do what’s right … Increasing the tobacco tax is a win-win for our state.
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