As a physician, I have spent my career treating patients with chronic diseases. One lesson becomes obvious very quickly: preventing a patient from getting sicker is always better than treating them after their health has deteriorated.

Unfortunately, Medicare's current rules have it backwards. Today, more than 35 million Americans are enrolled in Medicare Advantage, and more than 85 percent have at least two chronic diseases. Many of these conditions are diet-related and can be improved with nutrition-based clinical interventions. Research shows that targeted nutrition can improve health outcomes and reduce costly hospitalizations. Doctors know this. Patients know this. Medicare policy hasn't caught up.

Under current rules, Medicare Advantage plans can provide healthy food benefits to a narrow subset of chronically ill seniors, but generally only after they incur high costs, including being at significant risk for hospitalization and requiring intensive care management. Think about how backwards that is.

A physician may know that better nutrition could help a patient control his diabetes or manage her heart disease. But Medicare effectively says: wait until that patient gets sicker and more expensive to treat before making that tool available. Meanwhile, Medicare Advantage plans can cover "fitness benefits" like bowling balls, wi-fi, and ski passes, from Day One.

Yes, you read that correctly. Under Medicare's rules, it’s easier to cover a bowling ball than healthy food prescribed by a doctor to manage chronic disease.

We can fix this today, without an act of Congress, without creating a new entitlement, and without spending another taxpayer dollar. I recently led a letter asking Medicare administrator Mehmet Oz to recognize healthy food as a "primarily health related" supplemental benefit for qualifying Medicare Advantage patients.

This common-sense change would allow plans to make clinically appropriate nutrition available earlier in a patient's care, when it may actually prevent more serious and expensive complications. This is not food assistance or an unrestricted grocery benefit. It is a targeted clinical intervention for patients with chronic conditions, with eligible foods tied to the government's official dietary guidelines. Most important to me as a physician, healthy food should be available to seniors when their doctor determines it is medically necessary.

If a physician knows better nutrition can help a patient manage diabetes today, why should Washington require that patient to get sicker before Medicare gives the doctor the tools to help? There is a taxpayer argument here, too. The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services already sends billions of taxpayer dollars to Medicare Advantage plans for supplemental benefits. This proposal doesn’t spend a dime more. It simply allows plans to put existing resources toward preventing disease rather than paying for its consequences.

For too long, our health care system has rewarded sick care rather than health care. The MAHA agenda of the Trump administration and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is changing that paradigm by addressing chronic disease and putting prevention first. CMS has an opportunity to turn that principle into action for millions of American seniors. For the first time in Medicare's history, we can formally recognize healthy food as a targeted clinical intervention to prevent and manage chronic disease. We don't need a new government program.

We don't need billions in new spending. We just need Medicare's rules to catch up with the evidence and give doctors the ability to intervene before their patients end up in the hospital. That's better medicine, better stewardship of taxpayer dollars and a healthier Medicare program. Gregory F. Murphy, M.D., represents North Carolina’s 3rd District in the U.S. House of Representatives.