No one really knows whether preventive medicine will save money in the long run, let alone free up the billions of dollars a year needed to help pay for universal health insurance. In fact, studies have shown that preventive care — be it cancer screening, smoking cessation or plain old checkups — usually ends up costing money. It makes people healthier, but it's not free...
...by describing it as an easy win-win solution, the presidential candidates are gliding over an important part of the issue. Preventive care saves real money only when it replaces existing care that is expensive and doesn’t do much, if any, good. There are plenty of examples of such care...persuading [people] that basic care is sometimes cheaper and better — will be difficult.
More: "I realize many people will react to the notion that preventive care usually costs money by saying, 'So what? We should do it anyway.' And we should."
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