An Ounce of Prevention
从经济学角度审视预防措施，指出预防应视为保险而非省钱手段，多数医疗预防不省钱但改善健康，而生活方式和早期干预可能既省钱又改善健康；预防措施价值因人因措施而异，健康保险对预防的覆盖应比治疗更广泛。
I look at prevention through an economic lens and make three main points. First, those advocating preventive measures are often asked how much money a given measure saves. This question is misguided. Rather, preventive measures can be thought of as insurance, with a certain cost in the present that may or may not pay off in the future. In fact, although most medical preventive measures improve expected health, they do not save money. Various lifestyle and early childhood interventions, however, may both save money and improve health. Second, preventive measures, including medical and life style measures, are heterogeneous in their value, both across measures and within measure, across individuals. As a result, generalizations in everyday discourse about the value of prevention can be overly broad. Third, health insurance coverage for medical preventive measures should generally be more extensive than coverage for the treatment of a medical condition, though full coverage of preventive services is not necessarily optimal.