Prevention Matters

Dr. Steven H. Woolf attracted national attention in February with a commentary he wrote in JAMA about the value of prevention in the health reform debate. That commentary synthesized a scholarly paper Woolf and others prepared for Partnership for Prevention rebutting critics who have downplayed prevention's place in the debate on the grouds that it did not save money.

Woolf, a professor of family medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University, has now been invited to address the America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) Institute 2009 about his work. He will speak at a session on "The Economics of Disease Prevention" that is scheduled for for 11:40 am Thursday, June 4, at the San Diego Convention Center.

"Your recent article in JAMA and your work with the Partnership for Prevention are very important to health care reform and for stakeholders wrestling to balance cost and quality in a struggling economy," Stephanie Lentz Dougherty, AHIP's Senior Director of Professional Education, said in her invitation to Woolf.

AHIP's Institute is the nation's leading conference for the health insurance industry attended by more than 3,000 health care leaders. The educational content at this year's conference has an emphasis on health care reform.

A new report from the Business Roundtable, which represents CEOs of major companies, says America's health care system has become a liability in a global economy. The report says Americans in 2006 spent $1,928 per capita on health care, at least two-and-a-half times more per person than any other advanced country.

The report added a new wrinkle by taking those those costs and factoring benefits into the equation. It compares statistics on life expectancy, death rates and even cholesterol readings and blood pressures. The health measures are factored together with costs into a 100-point "value" scale. That hasn't been done before, the authors said.

The results - the United States is 23 points behind five leading economic competitors: Canada, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom and France. The five nations cover all their citizens, and though their systems differ, in each country the government plays a much larger role than in the U.S.
The cost-benefit disparity is even wider — 46 points — when the U.S. is compared with emerging competitors: China, Brazil and India.