Commentary Discusses Economics of Preventive Health Care
"A Closer Look at the Economic Argument for Disease Prevention," Journal of the American Medical Association: The commentary by Steven Woolf of the Department of Family Medicine, Epidemiology and Community Health at Virginia Commonwealth University examines the economics of preventive health care and writes, "Services that yield net savings -- whether prevention or treatment -- are priorities." However, he continues that "the greatest gains in controlling costs will occur by shifting spending to services that maximize value while reducing outlays on services with the lowest benefit per dollar." He adds that the debate over the economic value of prevention is inappropriate without similar scrutiny for the rest of medical care (Woolf, JAMA, 2/4).
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