Preventative Care no Panacea

Posted by Marc Kilmer in Health Care on Apr 8th, 2008 | no responses

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With many national and state plans assuming that more coverage will equal lower costs because people will receive preventative care and thus save money on high-cost illnesses, this Washington Post article is a must-read:

In 1986, a health economist named Louise B. Russell published "Is Prevention Better Than Cure?," in which she concluded that prevention activities tend to cost more than they save. Since the book's appearance, her observation has been borne out by studies of hundreds of interventions — everything from offering mammograms to all women and prescribing drugs to people with high cholesterol to requiring passenger-side air bags in cars and shortening the response time of ambulances.

On closer look, this isn't so surprising. Nor is it reason for despair. After all, you get something from prevention — less disease, for starters — which is worth a lot even if it doesn't come cheap.

There are many reasons prevention usually doesn't save money. Perhaps the most important is that prevention activities target many more people than will ever come down with the disease being prevented. The reason (thankfully) is that people tend to stay healthy for most of their lives, no matter what they do.

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