Prevention vs. Treatment

What's the Right Balance?
Erscheinungsjahr 2011
ISBN: 978-0-19-983737-3
Verlag: OXFORD UNIV PR

Buch, Englisch, 416 Seiten, Format (B × H): 161 mm x 240 mm, Gewicht: 784 g

Everyone knows the old adage, "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure," but we seem not to live by it. In the Western world's health care it is commonly observed that prevention is underfunded while treatment attracts greater overall priority. This book explores this observation by examining the actual spending on prevention, the history of health policies and structural features that affect prevention's apparent relative lack of emphasis, the values that may justify
priority for treatment or for prevention, and the religious and cultural traditions that have shaped the moral relationship between these two types of care.

Economists, scholars of public health and preventive medicine, philosophers, lawyers, and religious ethicists contribute specific sophisticated discussions. Their descriptions and claims lean in various directions and are often surprising. For example, the imbalance between prevention and treatment may not be as great as is often thought, and we may be spending excessively on many preventive measures just as we do on treatments compelled by the felt demands of rescue. A standard practice in
health economics that disadvantages prevention, "discounting" the value of future lives, may rest on weak empirical and moral grounds. And it is an "apocalyptic" religious tradition (Seventh-day Adventism) whose members have put some of the strongest and most effective priority on long-term
prevention.

Prevention vs. Treatment is distinctive in carefully clarifying the nature of the empirical and moral debates about the proper balance of prevention and treatment; the book pursues those debates from a wide range of perspectives, many not often heard from in health policy.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Faust, Halley S.

Menzel, Paul T.

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Angewandte Ethik & Soziale Verantwortung Bioethik, Tierethik
• Medizin | Veterinärmedizin Medizin | Public Health | Pharmazie | Zahnmedizin Medizin, Gesundheitswesen Public Health, Gesundheitsmanagement, Gesundheitsökonomie, Gesundheitspolitik
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Volkswirtschaftslehre Gesundheitsökonomie
• Medizin | Veterinärmedizin Medizin | Public Health | Pharmazie | Zahnmedizin Medizin, Gesundheitswesen Präventivmedizin, Gesundheitsförderung, Medizinisches Screening
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Regierungspolitik Umwelt- und Gesundheitspolitik
• Medizin | Veterinärmedizin Medizin | Public Health | Pharmazie | Zahnmedizin Medizin, Gesundheitswesen Gesundheitssystem, Gesundheitswesen
• Naturwissenschaften Biowissenschaften Biowissenschaften Bioethik, Tierethik

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. Introduction
Part I. Evidence, Policy, and History
2. What Is Currently Spent on Prevention as Compared to Treatment?
3. Prevention vs. Cure: An Economist's Perspective on the Right Balance
4. Toward a More Evidence-Based Preventive Medicine: Issues in the Science of Clinical Prevention
5. Prevention and the Science and Politics of Evidence
6. Historical Perspectives on Structural Barriers to Prevention
Part II. Philosophical and Legal Analysis
7. Our Alleviation Bias: Why Do We Value Alleviating Harm More than Preventing Harm?
8. Treatment and Prevention: What Do We Owe Each Other?
9. The Variable Value of Life and Fairness to the Already Ill: Two Promising but Tenuous Arguments for Treatment's Priority
10. The Slow Transition of U.S. Law Toward a Greater Emphasis on Prevention
11. Should the Value of Future Health Benefits Be Time-Discounted?
Part III. Religious and Cultural Perspectives
12. Prevention vs. Treatment: How Do We Allocate Scarce Resources from Jewish Ethical Perspectives?
13. Cure vs. Prevention: Catholic Perspectives
14. Loving God and the Neighbor: Protestant Insights for Prevention and Treatment
15. Apocalypse and Health: Treatment and Prevention in the Seventh-day Adventist Tradition
16. Prevention vs. Treatment in Hong Kong: Constrained Utilitarianism with a Chinese Character
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Edited by Halley S. Faust, MD, MPH, MA and Edited by Paul T. Menzel, Ph.D.

Halley S. Faust, MD, MPH, MA is a preventive medicine physician, philosopher, health care executive, and venture capitalist, and the President-Elect of the American College of Preventive Medicine. He is Clinical Associate Professor of Family and Community Medicine at the University of New Mexico. Paul T. Menzel, PhD has taught philosophy at Pacific Lutheran University(Tacoma, WA) since 1971. He has authored two books on moral questions about health economics and numerous papers on rights to health care and the role of values in shaping choices of health system structure.