There is an argument that if everyone is covered, there will be a free-for-all of spending on health-care. That doesn’t make sense to me and to many people better informed than I am, but I will get to them in a minute.

Let me ask you, Are you insured? Do you go to the doctor just because you are? If you have dental insurance the answer is probably yes. Same with eye coverage, you are more likely to go to the doctor to get an eye exam if you are covered. So I would have to say that yes there is a little more cost to offering preventative services.

What is the cost of not offering coverage. The uninsured don’t go to the doctor, the eye doctor or the dentist unless they have a bad problem. Lack of prevention over a life time leads to more serious problems later and a habit of putting off care leads to poor compliance, more complications, overall increased cost.

Here are the opinions of several others. Malcom Gladwell has an article in the New Yorker on the case against the moral argument. Joseph Padula has the seventh of 7 articles on this issue on his blog Managed Care Matters. He makes an eloquent argument for universal coverage.

I am for universal preventative services. Some of these could be delivered at school, like tooth care, dietary information, exercise benefits to health and brain etc… Some have to be delivered by Doctors. No one wants to get their pap test at the nurses clinic at work and they shouldn’t. Cholesterol screening, risk factor evaluation, prostate and colon cancer screening need to be done with a physician involved.

The most important interventions require more than just physicians to be involved. Who benefits from healthy citizens?

We all do but especially insurance companies, employers and the largest payer for health services, the government. Lets get our citizens eating right, exercising, with good teeth and gums. Then we will see our costs go down. We have an aging population that are going to cost more health care dollars. Old people get sicker under our current system. It costs far less to help someone stay healthy than it does to restore them to health.

What is your opinion? How will you vote now and in the future? Everyone votes for what benefits their bank account. You have to protect your own income but look down the road. What can you do now to protect your earning capacity well into your 70’s. You are going to need it. What do you think the plan should be?

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