The ACA’s crucial prevention component

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.”