Preventative Care

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In today’s society, it is important to look at more than one option for treating diseases in a country with growing obesity and heart disease rates like the United States. It would be interesting to observe the government place greater emphasis and funds towards preventative care methods and witness the effects in the American health care system. An article written for U.S. News & World Report by Bill Frist, a cardiothoracic surgeon and a co-chair of the Bipartisan Policy Center's Health Project, discussed the potential of a preventative care system and shared the success of the YMCA’s Diabetes Prevention Program. Members of the one-year program reduced their chances of Type II diabetes through weight loss, and “costs of the program were far …show more content…

This example illustrates the willingness of various health care plans to support the expense of preventative measures if proven to be efficient. According to Frist, the results of this initiative caught the eye of 30 various health care plans that were willing to cover the cost; and he believes more can be accomplished with federal support of public health programs and research. Evidence like the YMCA’s preventative program data will allow the U.S. to move forward in positive public health decisions that will hopefully improve the quality of life for millions of Americans. However, some policymakers have shared how certain preventative health care initiatives are not cost-effective.
While preventive methods like diabetes or alcohol awareness programs are shown to be affordable and effective for Americans, precautionary approaches like screenings are costly and hold controversial value to some patients. The New England Journal of Medicine shared a piece written about health care economics and discussed the importance of the population at hand when arguing the value of preventive care. The

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