Health Care, Prevention and Costs

The mantra among the pro-big-government health care crowd is that preventive care will generate huge savings in order to pay for … well … costly government-run health care.

Huh? Anyway …

Unfortunately, they forget or ignore that preventive care comes with costs as well. That economic fact of life is neatly explained in a column by Charles Krauthammer that ranks as must reading.

Krauthammer notes:

This inconvenient truth comes, once again, from the CBO. In an August 7 letter to Rep. Nathan Deal, CBO director Doug Elmendorf writes: “Researchers who have examined the effects of preventive care generally find that the added costs of widespread use of preventive services tend to exceed the savings from averted illness.”

How can that be? Read the rest of Krauthammer’s column here.

Raymond J. Keating
Chief Economist
Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council