In recent weeks, President Obama has gotten flack for insisting that, despite the nation's urgent economic problems, “health care reform cannot wait.”
 

On this point, though, he's absolutely right. But that doesn't mean we need more government programs. What we need is a focus on chronic disease.
 

Chronic diseases are among the most serious public health threats facing the American people today. These conditions, which include diabetes, chronic kidney disease, cardiovascular disease and cancer, often last for years, requiring frequent treatment throughout a person's life. The toll they exact on American patients is appalling, accounting for 70 percent of all deaths in the United States.
 

America's exorbitant health care spending is also linked to these destructive illnesses. In fact, 75 percent of the more than $2 trillion spent on health care in the United States goes toward caring for those with chronic conditions. Heart disease and strokes alone cost the American people $448 billion in 2008.
 

It's for these reasons that combating chronic conditions must be a central goal of health care reform. Fortunately, unlike some public health crises of the past, the challenges posed by chronic conditions are hardly insurmountable. That's because a large majority of them can be prevented simply through healthier lifestyle choices.
 

As a practicing primary care physician specializing in treating the elderly, I understand better than most how unhealthy habits can, over time, lead to debilitating chronic conditions.
 

But before any effort to reduce the incidence of these diseases can be effective, we need to rethink the way medicine is practiced in the United States. In short, health care in this country needs to be more patient-focused.

For doctors, this means practicing a more personalized kind of care that aims at keeping patients healthy, and not simply on treating illnesses when they arise.
 

Toward this end, experimenting with new health care delivery models may prove effective. In the “medical home” model, for instance, a single personal physician coordinates all of an individual's medical care over the course of that person's life. This allows for a more comprehensive approach to medicine that stresses healthy living and disease prevention over stopgap treatment solutions.
 

In other words, the government doesn't have to step in and incentivize us to take better care of ourselves. The truth is that the government isn't equipped to do such a thing. And that's not a proper role for government, either.
 

Lawmakers can, though, create a system where both patients and physicians are incentivized to prevent chronic illnesses before they develop. Moving closer to a health care model where patients are rewarded for living healthier lives and physicians are compensated based on outcomes rather than volume of service would go a long way toward reducing health care costs.
 

Just look at breast cancer, an illness that killed more than 40,000 women in 2004. According to Researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, regular mammograms could reduce that number by up to one-third.
 

The same goes for hypertension, a leading cause of stroke and heart attack. If caught early, high blood pressure can be effectively treated with prescription medication before it evolves into something worse.
 

In fact, a recent study published in the journal Health Affairs found that blood pressure medication reduced the number of heart attacks and strokes in 2002, saving Americans more than $16 billion. That same study found that properly using antihypertensive therapies could reduce the number of premature deaths from heart disease in America by 89,000 and the number of hospital admissions for strokes by 287,000.
 

Recognizing the urgency of this issue, leaders of key health care institutions – from AARP to pharmaceutical companies – have united behind the goal of making chronic illnesses far less common.
 

Our health care system is ripe for reform. Not because it is irreparably broken, but rather because the reforms we need are well within our grasp. It's crucial that we all work to reduce the prevalence of chronic illness.