[Tax-chick]

There seems to be a confusion between “prevention” and “diagnosis.” Diagnosis would, one assumes, lead to treatment, which is more expensive than not diagnosing and not treating illness.

[ArmstedFragg]

The areas you cited are examples in which the conflict between “public health” and individual patient choice are most evident. Those particular screenings are justified on the basis of reducing disease rates in the population as a whole, rather than preventing the individual from developing the disease. There's sort of a reverse divide in the example of many government health plans refusing to do routine PSA screenings because the net negative public health consequences clearly exceed the positive.

Patients come as individuals, though, and the more directly the payer of claims focuses solely on what's to the benefit of the populace as a whole, the less freedom the patient has. Somewhere there's a balance, but I'd suspect it involves pushing patient choice as far down the continuum toward the individual as possible. The incentives for government are in the opposite direction.

[basil]

I wonder how one “apprehends” a folly......

[neverdem]

BTTT!

[curiosity]

Indeed, though I suppose you could argue that this is prevenative in that knowledge of having an infections disease may reduce the chance of spreading it to others.

I'd also note that even true prevenative care tends to increase healthcare costs overall. Prevenative care results in longer lifespans and greater survivability of deseases, which in turn translates into a larger population of the old and sick. The cost-increasing effect of skewing the population to more old and sick people swamps the cost decreasing effects of preventing diseases or catching them early.

From a cost perspective, you don't want to prevent diseases that tend to quickly kill people before they get old.