The ROI of preventive care

For a while now, we have heard about how investing in preventative care essentially pays for itself. The theory is that preventative care is cheap relative to treating advanced conditions, and that preventative care done early enough can help prevent those advanced conditions from developing. Hence, if society made preventative care more readily available, then the theory is that society would spend less on health care in the long-run. An example of how this theory affected public policy is how the Affordable Care Act mandated that qualified insurance plans include free annual wellness exams.

Unfortunately for the theory, The New York Times published a piece summarizing various studies showing that preventative care does not actually save money (except for childhood immunizations and the counseling of adults regarding the use of aspirin). That's not to say that society should not invest in preventative care, but rather that there might not be the easy choice of investing in better health and reaping financial savings to more than offset the original investment. If society wants its members to have better health, it might just need to pay for it.