"Preventative medicine is much, much cheaper" I question that assertion. Source? Note that it is not sufficient to merely say "if you have condition X, it's b

"Preventative medicine is much, much cheaper" I question that assertion. Source? Note that it is not sufficient to merely say "if you have condition X, it's better to have caught it early", because that ignores (a) the cost of testing all the people who don't have condition X for that condition and (b) the cost when widespread testing leads to false positives which cause one to think the patient has condition X leading to treatment which produces needless expense, disability and/or death. Every time you take your car in for an inspection the mechanic is likely to find things that are wrong and need fixing; ditto for taking your body in for a check-up. But on the margin, medicine is just about as likely to make you less healthy as more healthy, so being prescribed more of it is not a clear win. (see the Rand study, MRFIT, and so on)