WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. Senators Angus King (I-ME) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) are introducing a Senate Resolution affirming support for the forty-year-old federal task force charged with guiding medical best practices across the United States. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), recently reported to be in the early stages of being disbanded, is responsible for making evidence-based recommendations about clinical preventive services such as screenings, counseling services, and preventive medications. These prevention measures guide patients and providers in their treatment options to keep Americans healthy with the secondary order effect of keeping treatment costs down.

Created in 1984, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force is a scientifically independent, volunteer panel of national experts that works to improve the health of people nationwide. Task Force members come from the fields of preventive medicine and primary care, including internal medicine, family medicine, pediatrics, behavioral health, obstetrics and gynecology, and nursing. Their recommendations are based on a rigorous review of existing peer-reviewed evidence and are intended to help primary care clinicians and patients decide together whether a preventive service is right for a patient's needs. As required by the Affordable Care Act, public and private insurers also use the USPSTF recommendations to determine what preventive interventions should be covered without cost-sharing by patients.

“Every Maine person deserves access to affordable, evidence-based medicine,” said Senator King. “The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, historically, has been that guiding light: a group of independent experts that came together to offer science-backed treatment options for everything from heart disease to HIV prevention and routine cancer screenings. I have always said that ‘an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,’ but the ongoing threats from the Trump Administration to disband the task force are the latest example that the cheapest medical procedure is the one that never is needed because of precautions and treatment ahead of time. While I hope this does not come to fruition, I will continue working with my colleagues to ensure that this task force can continue to operate in an apolitical landscape for decades to come.”

"The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force makes evidence-based recommendations so Americans can get preventive care like cancer screenings and HIV prevention for free—but the Trump administration is threatening to rip that away,” said Senator Warren. “I will always fight to lower health care costs and protect health care for Americans."

"Everyone deserves a fair chance to live a healthy life. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force helps make that possible by grounding preventive care in the best available science, not ideology. Senator King’s resolution is a strong affirmation that evidence, not politics, should guide how we keep people well," said Dr. Aaron Carroll, president and CEO of AcademyHealth, a non-partisan group that supports the creation and use of evidence to improve the health of all Americans.

Joining King on the resolution are Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Ben Ray Luján (D-NM) and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN).

Senator King, known as the ‘Prevention Senator,’ has long worked on policy solutions that keep Maine people healthy and lower the costs for patients and providers alike. He has previously introduced legislation require private insurance plans to cover three annual primary care visits and three annual outpatient mental health or outpatient substance use disorder treatment visits, without charging a copayment, coinsurance, or deductible-related fee. In doing so, this legislation also would catch smaller, or early health symptoms before they become larger threats requiring more extensive and expensive treatments. Most recently, he introduced the ‘Stand Strong’ package, which included the Stand Strong Falls Prevention Act that would require the development of a National Falls Prevention Plan, the Preventive Home Visits Act, which would provide Medicare coverage for qualified care providers to assess the safety of seniors’ homes, and the Wellness and Education for Longer Lives (WELL) for Seniors Act, which would improve Medicare’s Annual Wellness Visit to encourage seniors and their physicians to work together and confront health issues before they become more serious.

The full text of the resolution can be found here.

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