Dirk Gently
Premium Member
- Joined
- Jul 15, 2005
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How does a person take preventive medicine for things like high blood pressure, cholesterol, triglycerides, and type 2 diabetes if they don't go to the doctor to find out you have the diseases? How does a person got to the doctor, find out they need the medication and get the $4/month prescription if they don't have health insurance? Instead of getting treated with regular preventive checkups, people go to the intensive care with a heart attack or stroke that very likely could have been prevented for $4/month.
And I have no problem with taxing tobacco more to cover the associated health care costs. Tax it enough to cover healthcare costs related to both smoking and second hand smoke. Also, more state should follow Ohio and ban smoking in public places.
There are certainly fringe cases where preventative medicine can help, I'm not discounting that. I just haven't seen any evidence that people who would take those aren't getting those just because they don't have insurance. In most cases people with high blood pressure and cholesterol know they have that because they have a family history of it. I'm not opposed to people being checked for that, and I think it can be beneficial. I just don't see making the process easier to access making a significant difference on overall healthcare costs. Evidence of already insured people shows that most people don't bother with regular checkups. Those who do, many still ignore changing their routine (taking new medicine, changing behavior, etc). In a perfect world, people would care about it, and act proactively. We don't live in a perfect world, and most people aren't willing to act with the best interests of their long term health costs in mind.
In order for preventative care to be effective, you need to fundamentally change human behavior. The easiest way to do that is financially. For most, that doesn't mean just making it free. Adding a yearly health tax for everyone, that can be written off by people who had a checkup could work. Most people do a really bad job of acting in a way that reduces their future health care costs. Until that issue is addressed, we're looking at small improvements at best.