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"Preventive care should not be something you look to insurance to pay for. Do you expect to be insured against your weekly grocery shopping bill? Your utilities
by hsitz 13y ago
"Preventive care should not be something you look to insurance to pay for. Do you expect to be insured against your weekly grocery shopping bill? Your utilities? Your rent?"
In fact, Obamacare mandates that much preventive care be provided for free. Health insurance is different from many kinds of insurance, which you hope never to collect on. With healthcare insurance you're very likely to use at least some covered services every year. Preventive care is the kind of care everyone should have every year, and it is the kind of care that best reduces health costs, making it best for patients and for nation as a whole. That's why Obamacare requires that it be covered 100%, even in least expensive bronze plans. This encourages people to get preventive care and prevents bigger expenses for them later on. I'm not knocking Obamacare. Hardly, I'm a proponent of it. It makes sense.
- hga 13y ago"Preventive care is the kind of care everyone should have every year, and it is the kind of care that best reduces health costs...." BZZZT. As I understand it, study after study shows preventive case does not result in cost reductions. E.g. look at the controversial mammogram screening recommendations that came out a while ago. There are many other mechanisms where not immediately obvious things come into play. That's not to say we shouldn't do it, look at the backlash to those mammogram recommendations, which would have killed a friend of mine in her early 40s if she and her doctor had followed them, just that they will overall cost more.
- hsitz 13y agoBZZZT. Preventive care in general is cheapest and study after study shows that it is. That doesn't mean that certain kinds of preventive care might not work. Of course if they don't work then they're not cost effective. But the fact that smart, simple tests to catch diseases or conditions before they've progressed is most cost effective method has been established for a long time. Heck, just having patients get in for an annual physical and quick look over from a doctor is cost-effective form of preventive care. That's why ACA requires it to be covered. I do agree that unwise or poorly designed preventive care, usually in the form of excessive and expensive testing that is poorly chosen and often has too many false positives, is one of the big problems running up medical costs. That does not change the fact that proper preventive care is most cost-effective form of healthcare.
- hga 13y agoThe famously biased in the other direction PolitiFact says otherwise and goes into some detail: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/feb/10/barack-obama/barack-obama-says-preventive-care-saves-money/ http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/feb/...
- tunesmith 13y ago"Preventative care does not result in cost reductions" is a rather contentless argument - it has to be broken down into exactly what people are trying to talk about. For instance, while there may be mammogram-related arguments on one side, it's also obvious that it costs less to take care of a small medical condition that, left untreated, would result in an expensive trip to the emergency room.
- gaius 13y agoWell, I don't really want to claim on my car insurance either, but it would be pretty unusual if the insurance company covered my MOT. What sort of insurance are you thinking of that you do plan to collect on?
- ZeroGravitas 13y agoDon't most car insurance policies pay for repair of window chips on the very rational basis that a chip can turn into a much more expensive window replacement if not treated?
- gaius 13y agoRight, but that's repairing damage that has happened. Preventative means something else. It means taking preemptive action. Preventative healthcare would be something like paying for your vitamins and gym membership.
- tunesmith 13y agoPreventative means more like having a physical where you discover an easily treated cancerous mole.