Saturday, January 28, 2006

Government proposes a return to preventative healthcare

I was delighted to read this article which trailers the governments health white paper which is due to be published on Monday.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4656866.stm

I wasn't entirely convinced by the Lib Dem response as quoted in this piece - lets hope that we were just underquoted. We should wholeheartedly support these proposals and go further. We should call on the Labour government to reverse the charges for eye tests and dental check ups which were introduced by the previous Conservative government.

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1 comment:

Joe Otten said...

The idea of preventative health care sounds fantastic. But very often it amounts to little more than telling people, AGAIN, to quit smoking and eat less fat, etc.

Of course there would be benefits to people if they actually take the advice, but we should not assume that they will in making a hard-nosed assessment of its value.

There are some particular preventative measures which are known to work well, eg statins for cholesterol, and aspirin for heart conditions. But I would think twice about demanding more preventitive intervetions in general when a sober analysis might prefer more non-preventitive interventions to the more marginal preventitive ones.