Limitations
Since preventive medicine deals with healthy individuals or populations the costs and potential harms from interventions need even more careful examination than in treatment. For an intervention to be applied widely it generally needs to be affordable and highly cost effective.
For instance, intrauterine devices (IUD) are highly effective and highly cost effective contraceptives, however where universal health care is not available the initial cost may be a barrier. IUDs work for several years (3 to 7 or more) and cost less over a year or two's time than most other reversible contraceptive methods. They are also highly cost effective, saving health insurers and the public significant costs in unwanted pregnancies. Making contraceptives available with no up front cost is one way to increase usage, improving health and saving money.
Preventive solutions may be less profitable and therefore less attractive to makers and marketers of pharmaceuticals and medical devices. Birth control pills which are taken every day and may take in a thousand dollars over ten years may generate more profits than an IUD, which despite a huge initial markup only generates a few hundred dollars over the same period.
Read more about this topic: Preventive Medicine
Famous quotes containing the word limitations:
“That all may be so, but when I begin to exercise that power I am not conscious of the power, but only of the limitations imposed on me.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“Growing up means letting go of the dearest megalomaniacal dreams of our childhood. Growing up means knowing they can’t be fulfilled. Growing up means gaining the wisdom and skills to get what we want within the limitations imposed by reality—a reality which consists of diminished powers, restricted freedoms and, with the people we love, imperfect connections.”
—Judith Viorst (20th century)
“No man could bring himself to reveal his true character, and, above all, his true limitations as a citizen and a Christian, his true meannesses, his true imbecilities, to his friends, or even to his wife. Honest autobiography is therefore a contradiction in terms: the moment a man considers himself, even in petto, he tries to gild and fresco himself.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)