The "Patients' Bill of Rights" currently before Congress does not emphasize the need for preventive health care, the dean of the School of Public Health (SPH) said this week.

In an upcoming article in Newsweek magazine, Barry R. Bloom challenges the health insurance focus of the Congressional plan with his own "Public Health Bill of Rights."

"The real issue is not how to make group health plans pay more, but how to keep Americans from getting critically ill in the first place," Bloom writes in an Oct. 11 piece titled, "The Wrong Rights." He addresses the problems behind the nation's top killers: heart disease, cancer, stroke and injuries.

According to the article, tobacco use leads to 19 percent of all deaths; unhealthy diet and inactivity leads to 14 percent, alcohol leads to 5 percent, infectious disease leads to 5 percent, firearms lead to about 2 percent and accidents lead to 1 percent.

Bloom's Bill of Rights outlines six points targeting these causes: the right to information, the right to mother and infant care, the right to childhood immunization, the right to teenage counseling, the right to health screening and the right to a healthy environment.

Bloom writes that only a small percentage of Americans would be affected by the Patients' Bill of Rights, which would give patients the right to sue their managed care providers and to appeal claims to a third party.

The bill would also require HMOs to provide access to specialized and emergency care.

Bloom argues that the bill does nothing to tackle what he sees as the underlying problem of health care in America: inadequate preventive measures.