Frasier Star, New Task Force Issue Warning on Alzheimer's

Alzheimer's Association
Tuesday, 8 June 1999

The Time is Now for Congress to Avert a Major Health Care Crisis

Television star David Hyde Pierce today told Congress that Alzheimer's disease is fomenting a crisis in the nation's health care system and he hailed the formation of the new Congressional Task Force on Alzheimer's Disease as the right kind of response to the looming disaster.

Hyde Pierce, the award-winning actor who plays Dr. Niles Crane on NBC's top-rated comedy Frasier, joined Representatives Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and Christopher Smith (R-N.J.) to announce the formation of the task force to focus much-needed national attention on the disease. Hyde Pierce told Congress that recent research discoveries mean, "hope is on the horizon, but it will be realized only if Congress acts now."

Appearing on behalf of the Alzheimer's Association, Hyde Pierce said the crisis looms on three fronts:

- The number of people with Alzheimer's, 4 million now, could grow to 14 million when the baby boomers reach the age of highest risk of the disease.

- Family caregivers are subsidizing the U.S. health care system with an "invisible system" worth $196 billion a year. The health care system simply could not survive the collapse of that system.

- Medicare, Medicaid and American families and businesses all face runaway costs related to the spread of Alzheimer's.

The Alzheimer's Association is asking Congress for an additional $100 million in federal research funds for the National Institutes of Health to launch an historic Alzheimer's disease prevention campaign. Hyde Pierce said that younger people don't know that the disease can take hold as much as 20 years before the first symptoms appear. "That means there is a time bomb ticking in the heads of baby boomers," he said. "And the time is now, during good economic times, for the nation to head off the disease."

A $100 million increase for Alzheimer research would bring the federal investment to $500 million a year, a goal urged in 1991 by a federal advisory panel on Alzheimer's disease created by Congress. Hyde Pierce told of his own heartbreak when his grandfather was diagnosed with the disease — and related his first-hand knowledge of the crisis in caregiving. Family members suffer immense emotional and physical stress, he related. "The crisis is acute not just for people with the disease, but also for their families because of the collateral damage the disease causes," Hyde Pierce said.

He reminded Congress no one gets a "mild case" of Alzheimer's. Everyone the disease attacks will lose all memory, judgment, and ability to perform the most basic tasks. Families provide most of that care, and it is exhausting them — physically, emotionally, and financially.

The real financial assistance and services that caregivers so desperately need would be provided by proposals — from President Clinton and leading members of Congress — for a $1,000 tax credit for caregivers as well as federal assistance to states to expand respite and caregiver support programs. If real support for family caregivers were to provide even a one-month delay in nursing home placement, it will save $1,863 per person and that adds up to savings of more than $1 billion a year in the costs of Alzheimer care.

Representatives Markey and Smith, the co-chairs, said the new task force has three missions:

- to educate and focus attention on Alzheimer's disease and all its implications.

- to encourage increased research funding for the discovery of treatments and possible cure.

- to encourage bipartisan discussion on how to meet the long term care needs of Alzheimer patients.

Hyde Pierce has won an Emmy, a Screen Actors Guild Award and three American Comedy awards for his Frasier role. A native of Saratoga Springs, N.Y., and a Yale graduate, Hyde Pierce played off-Broadway and in a theater in Minneapolis before his 1989 breakthrough in the Broadway play The Heidi Chronicles. After that success and before the megahit Frasier, he was featured in a variety of TV and movie roles, including a memorable portrayal of John Dean in Nixon.

The Alzheimer's Association is the largest national voluntary health organization dedicated to research for the causes, treatments, prevention and cure of Alzheimer's disease and to providing education and support services to the four million Americans with the disease, their families and caregivers. You can reach the Alzheimer's Association at (800) 272-3900.

For more information, or to contact Alzheimer's Association, see their website at: www.alz.org