Preventive medicine is meant to reduce the high cost of health care related to treating chronic diseases and the associated deaths. According to Leichter (2014), approximately 7 out of 10 deaths result from chronic diseases which include cancer, diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases. Similarly, chronic diseases account for more than 75 percent of the health expenditure (Leichter, 2014) . Preventative medicine is based on the thought notion than most chronic diseases can be through a close coordination of the health care, and the preconditions for such diseases are detectable through proper screening. Preventative care includes eating healthy foods, exercise, avoiding tobacco, screening for chronic diseases, as well as preventative vaccination among others (Leichter, 2014) . In general, preventative health care delays or prevents the onset of chronic illnesses and prevents the already existing diseases from worsening; consequently enabling the affected individuals to live more productive lives and cut down on health care costs. However, some economists have viewed preventative health care as an expensive procedure that weighs heavily in the states’ budget. This paper will explore the arguments for and against preventative medicine as well as the impacts of the Affordable Care Act on the arguments. The article will further discuss the economic value of preventative medicine.
The proponents of the preventive medicine such as Maciosek et al. (2010) view preventive care as a good way of preventing chronic diseases before they begin, thus prolonging lives of vulnerable individuals, making them healthier and cutting down on medical costs. They also view routine vaccination as recommended by physicians as best ways of avoiding certain diseases which include meningitis, flu, pneumonia, and measles among others. According to them illnesses primarily drain the economy as more than 69 million workers fail to attend duties following various diseases every year (Maciosek et al. , 2010) . They, therefore, argue that preventing various illnesses is crucial to improving the health of the American society and controlling the rapidly escalating health care cost. They believe that the benefit of preventive care broadly spills to other sectors of the economy. Preventive health care provides children with an opportunity to grow in environments that enhance their healthy growth and development (Maciosek et al. , 2010) . Similarly, parents and other adults are made both healthy and productive; consequently creating a stable workforce that form attractive areas for the location of businesses and families.
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Impact of Affordable Care Act
Preventive care rose up as the main component of the Affordable Care Act. As a result, the Health Promotion, National Prevention, National Prevention Strategy, as well as the Public health Council were formed to implement the preventative medicine tenant (Maciosek et al. , 2010) . Through the Affordable Care Act, preventative medicine becomes accessible and affordable, since private health plans are required to cover some preventive care services without additional deductibles, co-insurance, and copayments or any other form of additional cost sharing. Similarly, the Affordable Care Act instructs Medicare to waive both deductible liabilities and beneficiary co-insurance for specified preventative health care services. The Affordable Care Act helped ladies with private plans through waiving deductibles and co-insurance for specified preventative services including; cholesterol screening and mammograms among other services (Maciosek et al. , 2010) . The major impact of the Affordable Care Act is that when cost-sharing like copayments, deductibles and co-insurance are removed from specified preventative care, the probability of using the preventative care increases.
Economic Value of Preventative Medicine
Although preventive care proves to be the most suitable option to save lives and improve the lives of the affected, it may not be plausible to view preventative medicine as a way of cutting down the cost of health care. Katz and Jekel (2014) view economic implication of preventative medicine to have been widely misunderstood especially by the strong proponents of the idea. For instance, they present a study conducted in 2010, documented in the journal Health Affairs realized that only 0.2 percent of the present health care spending would be saved if 90 percent of individuals living in the United States use the proved preventative services. There are few instances where preventive services produce net saving. Such instances include immunization of children and adult as discovered by the research done by Robert Johnson Foundation in 2009, and adult counseling on simpler ways of preventing the heart diseases (Katz and Jekel , 2014). Although vaccines are cheap, they can be used to protect a large population from various diseases. Similarly, counseling is inexpensive. However, Katz and Jekel notes that such instances are exceptional as several other well-known preventive strategies fail to improve the health of individuals. They also present a 2012 study which concluded that preventive care does not decrease the risk of premature deaths and increased illness (Katz and Jekel, 2014) . Most screenings done for cancer, such as the testicular, ovarian and prostate does not produce tangible health benefits; consequently influencing the Preventive Service Task Force to advise against the frequent utilization of the service.
Second, the massive numbers of people who will need a preventive service to avoid an expensive treatment of a particular disease. A move to provide care to prevent expensive treatment procedures should ultimately cut down the healthcare costs (Katz and Jekel, 2014) . However, the prevention strategy is expensive in itself, as a large number of individuals, most of whom who would have never needed the service otherwise are given the preventive care. For cost effectiveness, the care has to be provided to only those who will get sick, but since it is almost impossible to determine only those who will get sick among the entire population, preventive medicine becomes an expensive intervention.
In a nutshell, the paper outlined some of the benefits of preventative medicine as presented by proponents of preventive service. Indeed, preventative medicine is a successful way of avoiding expensive treatment. However, the cost of providing preventative care to the entire population can be very expensive to the government and insurers compared to the cost of treating diseases.
References
Katz, D. L., & Jekel, J. F. (2014). Jekel's epidemiology, biostatistics, preventive medicine, and public health . Philadelphia, Pa: Saunders.
Leichter, H. M. (2014). Free to be foolish: politics and health promotion in the United States and Great Britain . Princeton University Press.
Maciosek, M. V., Coffield, A. B., Flottemesch, T. J., Edwards, N. M., & Solberg, L. I. (2010). Greater use of preventive services in US health care could save lives at little or no cost. Health Affairs , 29 (9), 1656-1660.
