Americans are looking for smart ways to reduce health care costs while maintaining a high quality system that will continue to support future generations.

One of most cost-effective reforms we could make to our nation's health care system would be to ensure adequate health insurance coverage to our nation's children. Such an investment in the health and development of our youth could reap significant returns in the future by increasing the productivity of our workers [or strengthening our economy by increasing productivity] while lowering overall health care costs over the long term. Of all health care expenditures, those for children have the greatest potential impact on the health and vitality of our nation. For every $1 our nation has spent on childhood vaccinations, we have saved $16 on medical and social expenses. Expanding health insurance coverage to all children in America is just smart economics. A year's coverage for a child costs about a third of what it costs to cover a single working adult for the same length of time. Covering all children would cost a tiny fraction of the $1 trillion proposed to fund health reform, and this investment would have more positive far-reaching consequences for the reform of our health care system as a whole.

An immediate impact in savings would be found in the reduction of emergency room visits made by families who lack insurance coverage for their children. Instead of getting regular check-ups and preventative medical care for their children's ailments; these families often react to sudden crises in their child's health by taking them to the emergency room for treatment. Emergency room treatment is enormously costly, and ends up making our entire health care system more expensive than it should be. Federal law protects those seeking help in our emergency rooms regardless of their ability to pay and therefore the cost of that care must be made up somewhere else in the system. Where that money typically comes from is higher federal, state, and local taxes or higher premiums for those who are paying for insurance. The typical insurance premium is marked up by 8.5 percent to pay for health care for the uninsured. Reducing the frequency and extremity of these visits is therefore a reasonable strategy to reduce the costs of insurance, and the price of our health care system as a whole. As an example, consider a common childhood ailment such as asthma. In Texas, for example, the cost of treating mild asthma symptoms in a doctor's office is typically around $100. However, an extreme attack that requires emergency room treatment and a three-day hospital stay may add up to over $7000. Since the cost of treating this child will be borne in large part by taxpayers, physicians, and those already paying insurance premiums, it makes sense to consider the cheaper and healthier alternative. In 2008, uninsured children received $7.2 billion worth of health care from our system that the rest of us paid for in some way. Reducing unnecessary trips to the emergency room can cut this cost enormously.

Investing in the health of America's children is a sound investment in our economy as a whole. It is important to be reminded that a child's health care needs are not the same as an adult's, and that health care provided to a developing child can dramatically impact their future ability to contribute to the nation's economic vitality. Childhood health has been shown to correlate to income level and wealth in adulthood, and a healthy workforce is in the best interest of a nation seeking to maximize its productivity and efficiency. In studies done on siblings, a healthy childhood versus an unhealthy childhood led to as much as a 24 percent difference in earnings in adult careers. Approached in this way, our health care system is not a burden on our economy but instead one of its main driving engines. The health of our workforce is a national asset, and the most efficient way to maximize the potential of that asset is to ensure its health at its most critical stage of development, in youth.

The value of instilling a culture of preventative and proactive health care cannot be overstated. This approach should make sense to everyone no matter your politics and should make a lot of sense to Republicans who are concerned about costs and efficiencies. In the end, an individual's health care is their own responsibility. Lifestyle choices have an enormous impact on a person's health, and in a perfect world those of us who make good choices wouldn't be asked to pay for the health of those who make bad choices. But we don't live in a perfect world. So the best alternative available to us is to support a system that incentivizes good choices and encourages positive habits. Expanded health insurance coverage for children enables our health care experts to more directly and more frequently influence the lifestyle choices of our population. A shift in outlook, from a reactive and crisis-driven approach to health to a deliberate and preventive process involving constant education about and reinforcement of better habits, cannot help but be a better way for us to encourage personal responsibility and accountability for our choice of lifestyles.