Healthcare Issues: Preventive Approaches To Improving Health and Reducing Costs

There is emerging evidence, quite strong evidence, that preventive approaches can improve health and significantly reduce costs in a number of critical health care areas. These include:

§ Cardiovascular disease, including heart attacks, strokes, diabetes, etc.

§ Cancer, including breast cancer, lung cancer, colon cancer, etc.

§ Memory loss and cognitive impairment associated with aging, including vascular-based senility, Alzheimer’s disease, etc.

§ Mental health disorders, including many forms of mental illness that characterize childhood, adolescence, adulthood, middle age, and aging.

§ Developmental and learning disorders in childhood.

These conditions not only impair the health and well being of individuals, they undermine the productivity of America’s workforce. They also put an enormous financial burden of growing health care costs on the nation. Simply trying to contain costs through innovative cost containment policies can only be part of an effective plan. A truly effective plan must embark on a multidimensional approach that includes access to health care for all, more efficient and effective health care, and a systematic, intensive, and comprehensive preventive effort. Various components of the private sector could be brought in this effort.
The key is to emphasize preventive approaches in a much more ambitious way than has ever been done before as one component of a comprehensive program. Obviously, the other components are also critical and these include, as mentioned, access to health care for all, early access for all so that conditions do not worsen simply because of inadequate or late health care, and more efficient care where needless hospital stays are discouraged and flexible, less expensive, and often better community based and family based models are implemented. Preventive care offers enormous potential to improve all elements of a comprehensive approach.