The Pros And Cons Of Disease Prevention Programs

Disease prevention programs are in place to help produce a healthier population, the goal of many of these programs is not just to have a healthier population, but to save costs in healthcare also. Currently, the recent healthcare reform promised to devote millions of funds to disease prevention.1 However, the programs are expensive to run and maintain, typically requiring a numerous amount of resources. But, are disease prevention programs really saving money? In order to decide if a disease prevention program is cost saving or cost-effective one has to label the criteria. Disease prevention programs are most commonly cost-effective because they provide a reasonable value: to lower the risks of disease.2 However, if the program is around $50,000 or less, it is considered cost saving, and if it is $100,000 or more, it is considered not cost saving (for each QALY).2-3 Cost-effectiveness and cost saving are measured in QALY, which means quality adjusted life years. A year of perfect health would be 1 QALY, but most years fall between 0 and 1, and are measured based on events however they are not exact values.3 The low thresholds which are currently used for decision-making have been debated as being too low, which may make many programs not cost saving when they could be if the …show more content…
Unfortunately, no one can guarantee that someone will or will not get a certain disease. Many can go through the payments for the prevention program to reduce their risk but this may not necessarily reduce what they would spend if they actually got the disease, or if they would get the disease without going through the prevention program. This would depend on a variety of factors, such as the price for the prevention program, what they would possibly pay in insurance if they got the disease, environmental factors, etc. Most of these are highly individualized and therefore cannot judge for an entire