The Politics of Prevention

Though it may not pay to forestall illness, in the long run prevention will result in longer more productive lives. The only way to surely reduce health costs is to promote early, sudden death. Infanticide or contraception are the only sure plans for reducing health costs.

THE AFFIRMATIVE ACTION CANDIDATE!

NEVER IN THE HISTORY OF THIS COUNTRY HAS A PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE BEEN GIVEN SUCH A FREE PASS BY THE PRESS AND JUST ABOUT EVERYONE ELSE!

I AM WAITING FOR A BLACK PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE TO MAKE IT ON HIS OWN MERIT.

COLIN POWELL COMES TO MIND!

They harassed her until she registered to vote six times!:
http://www.foxnews.com/video2/video08.html?maven_referralObject=3145562&maven_referralPlaylistId=&sRevUrl=http://www.foxnews.com/politics/

"Not all Democrats agree with Mr. Frank that such policies are off-limits to criticism. Last week Rep. Artur Davis of Alabama said in a statement: 'Like a lot of my Democratic colleagues I was too slow to appreciate the recklessness of Fannie and Freddie. I defended their efforts to encourage affordable homeownership, when in retrospect, I should have heeded the concerns raised by their regulator in 2004. Frankly, I wish my Democratic colleagues would admit when it comes to Fannie and Freddie, we were wrong.'

"Mr. Davis is a member of the Congressional Black Caucus."

'Rank snobbery'

Camille Paglia, who supports Sen. Barack Obama, has nothing but scorn for the way the media has treated Sarah Palin.

"The mountain of rubbish poured out about Palin over the past month would rival Everest. What a disgrace for our jabbering army of liberal journalists and commentators, too many of whom behaved like snippy jackasses," Miss Paglia writes at www.salon.com.

"The bourgeois conventionalism and rank snobbery of these alleged humanitarians stank up the place. As for Palin's brutally edited interviews with Charlie Gibson and that viper, Katie Couric, don't we all know that the best bits ended up on the cutting-room floor? Something has gone seriously wrong with Democratic ideology, which seems to have become a candied set of holier-than-thou bromides attached like tutti-frutti to a quivering green Jell-O mold of adolescent sentimentality."

he ACORN does not fall from the tree:
http://justsaynodeal.com/acorn.html

This is one of the few Democrats that I am proud of!:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZR5ekEuGyvk

A man of great wisdom:
http://www.atlah.org/broadcast/manningreport.html

I keep seeing that Obama's plan would force chrinically ill into managed care while the rest woudl be free. This is an absurd abuse of equal rights.

The important point about this interview is that not all preventive efforts are worthwhile. That is certainly true. There is strong evidence that large scale tobacco control programs produce large and almost immediate savings. We found that the California Tobacco Control Program, which cost $1.8 billion over its first 15 years, saved $86 billion in health care costs. You can learn more about this work at http://www.scivee.tv/node/7124 .

The solution was presented many years ago by Charlton Heston in the movie Soilent Green. Determine the age at which the person ceases to be a positive contributor to the corporate bottom line and then send them to the protien factory to be processed into their "final contribution". I am being cinical but this article was totally rediculous to equate the issue of preventative healthcare and quality of life to a simple cost equation. I wonder how many of the top .01 % of the welthy elite choose not to prevent potentially miserable illnesses simply because it is cheaper to treat the disease then to prevent the missery.

The very existence of this study is indicative of the how whacked out this country is with respect to its own health care system. Even if one was to agree to the general point of the article, that what may be best for people isn???t always going to be technically cheaper in the long run, it completely misses what should be the central concern of this debate ??? morality. The reason every other industrialized nation other than the US has a government sponsored health care system is not because it is cheaper, it is because it is the right thing to do morally. For example, to let children (who have zero say in the debate) suffer and even die just so the privileged (most of whom inherited their privilege) can feed off of a slightly lower tax rate is about as immoral as it gets. So, please spare me from this pointless drivel about how people dying quicker saves us money. Making health care about money is immoral, and frankly, disgusting.

What a terrible article. Yes, SOME preventive medicine is more costly, but how many Americans actually need regular prostate screenings? Preventive medicine is about lifestyle changes, diet changes, fitness changes....in order to PREVENT future health problems. Americans are getting fatter every day and its weighing down our health care system. (pun intended)

What a terrible article. Yes, SOME preventive medicine is more costly, but how many Americans actually need regular prostate screenings? Preventive medicine is about lifestyle changes, diet changes, fitness changes....in order to PREVENT future health problems. Americans are getting fatter every day and its weighing down our health care system. (pun intended)

What a terrible article. Yes, SOME preventive medicine is more costly, but how many Americans actually need regular prostate screenings? Preventive medicine is about lifestyle changes, diet changes, fitness changes....in order to PREVENT future health problems. Americans are getting fatter every day and its weighing down our health care system. (pun intended)

They should consider not just health care costs, but overall costs. It may be cheaper to let me die faster when only health care costs are considered, but what about the job I will no longer have, the taxes I will no longer be paying, the family that I will no longer support (that may end up on government assistance)? We may pay more for prevention, which may cost more as far as health care costs are concerned, but we may make up for those additional costs with increased productivity, more years working and paying taxes, etc. It is shortsighted to consider only the health care costs.

Are you joking Newweek? I can't be sure, but thanks for a misleading title that the Insurance industry is sure to love. Everyone knows that screening can't always prevent some diseases, and once the disease strikes, it can be more expensive than the cost of preventive visits. Was that your whole point, to arrive at which, you had to have a discussion with experts? You actually get paid to state the obvious? Can I get that gig?

What about *overall* cost per year? If your experts mentioned that in the discussion, you seem to have omitted the relevant parts. If everyone had access to regular medical checkups, as is the case in most other western nations, would it reduce overall healthcare cost to the tax payer? Would it reduce emergency-room visists, which are more expensive than a doctor's appointment? What it doctors are trained in and given incentives to reduce unhealthy behaviors in patients, as they do in England? Would that reduce the number of smokers? British doctors think so. Are they lying? Now reading about those questions may be worthwhile. Please don't waste your time on drivel.