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Preventive medicine like this saves lives and money. But try convincing the pencil pushers. Looks like in both privatized and nationalized healthcare, they are
by michh 13y ago
Preventive medicine like this saves lives and money. But try convincing the pencil pushers. Looks like in both privatized and nationalized healthcare, they are often only willing to pay when there's a disease to diagnose. Not when there's an 80% chance you'll get it later when it's much harder and expensive to cure. Unless you have Jolie money and can simply afford to pay for it yourself.
- pixelcort 13y agoWouldn't the expected value of preventative care make it worth doing statistically? (cost of preventative care) < (cost of after-the-fact care) * 0.8
- arnsholt 13y agoSure it would. But the down-stream savings of preventative medicine don't show up in a balance sheet. There all you can see is money spent on people who don't really need it right now (or some variation on that general theme). That's a big part of the problem.
- Vivtek 13y agoWell, yes, actually they do show up in a balance sheet - that's why it's a good thing if your balance sheet is an entire population without the difficult cases jettisoned.
- rjtavares 13y agoIn Portugal I believe the state pays for preventive mastectomy in these cases. Of course, a lot of people chose not do it anyway (which I understand). The UK NHS also pays for it (http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Mastectomy/Pages/Why-is-it-necessary.aspx http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Mastectomy/Pages/Why-is-it-nece...)
- TazeTSchnitzel 13y agoNitpick: That's England's NHS, there is no UK-wide one. Although I think Wales, NI and Scotland's do similar things.
- rjtavares 13y agoI had no idea. Thanks for the correction.
- danso 13y agoEven if it were true that this surgery were only available to someone as rich as Jolie, if it is also true that it ends up costing less than waiting for cancer to hit, then our public health care realizes the same cost savings whether the patient is Jolie or in the low-income bracket. Jolie making a public statement is very helpful in changing the public consciousness of this dilemma, hopefully in a way that favors preventive care -- for everyone
- yummyfajitas 13y agoPreventive medicine like this saves lives and money. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. Lots of preventative medicine doesn't save either lives or money - mammograms below age 50 are a good example. The increased risk of infection from doing a biopsy on a non-cancerous mass (and similar complications) outweigh the rare early breast cancer cases prevented. http://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/uspstf/uspsbrca.htm http://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/uspstf/uspsbrca... http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-31/in-mammogram-debate-politics-trounces-science.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-31/in-mammogram-debate... I don't know the specific details of this case. Maybe she reduced her risk, or maybe she traded a 5/1000 risk of cancer for a 6/1000 risk of infection. But this "preventative medicine saves lives and money" meme needs to die. Sometimes it's worthwhile, sometimes it's not. Numbers >> political memes.
- kyro 13y agoNeeds to die? What are you talking about? Obviously administering tests that haven't been shown to be effective prophylactically and can even cause harm to a given population is a stupid idea. That's why we do research and weigh benefits/risks. That's like saying antibiotics need to die because many times they don't work and can cause resistant strains, when the problem is that physicians often administer them incorrectly. Appropriate preventative medicine supported by research and numbers is so, so important.
- jasallen 13y agoIt's more akin to saying "Antibiotics for every cold and allergy needs to die", which, is true. The other poster said the meme needs to die, not all preventative medicine.
- bicknergseng 13y ago>6/1000 risk of infection I know this is probably statistically true at some level (when using real statistics), but I do wonder how the statistics move for wealthy individuals at places like Mayo vs the national average. I would imagine the rate of infections at world class hospitals is lower than at a clinic in Englewood, but I wonder if it's enough to swing the statistics in electoral surgery's favor.
- famousactress 13y agoYou're pretty off-base. My mother has a group PPO here in the US that isn't anything special and just went through this procedure preventatively, after surviving ovarian cancer and finding that she was also at severe genetic risk for breast cancer. Her insurance covered all of the mastectomy and the reconstruction.
- calinet6 13y agoThat's great news—it also means she has great insurance... not everyone can afford that.