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The ACA’s crucial prevention component

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Regardless of the political wranglings around the Affordable Care Act (ACA), funding public health prevention efforts must continue, said HSPH Dean Julio Frenk in an op-ed in the Boston Globe on Oct. 2, 2013. He notes that spending on prevention within the ACA has already been reduced from a $15 billion commitment to $10 billion.

“Prevention may seem expensive, but in the long term it saves money,” said Frenk. “Consider that a scant 3 percent of current health care spending in the United States is now focused on prevention and public health, while a whopping 75 percent of health care costs are related to preventable conditions.”