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.

中文翻译：

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一盎司的预防

我从经济的角度看待预防，提出三个要点。首先，那些提倡预防措施的人经常被问到一个特定的措施可以节省多少钱。这个问题被误导了。相反，预防措施可以被认为是一种保险，目前有一定的成本，未来可能会或可能不会得到回报。事实上，尽管大多数医疗预防措施可以改善预期的健康状况，但它们并不能省钱。然而，各种生活方式和儿童早期干预措施既可以省钱又可以改善健康。其次，预防措施，包括医疗和生活方式措施，其价值是异质的，无论是跨措施还是在措施内，在个体之间都是如此。因此，日常讨论中关于预防价值的概括可能过于宽泛。第三，