You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

Unnamed comments on Politics Discussion Thread August 2012 - Less Wrong Discussion

0 Post author: OrphanWilde 01 August 2012 03:25PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (166)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Unnamed 02 August 2012 12:15:10AM *  1 point [-]

This appears to be the Circulation study that you cite: Kahn et al., 2008, "The Impact of Prevention on Reducing the Burden of Cardiovascular Disease". The full-text is free.

The authors of the Circulation study estimate that fully implementing all eleven prevention activities which they discuss would increase US medical spending by $7.6 trillion during the next 30 years, increasing medical spending on cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and coronary heart disease from $9.5T (their baseline estimate) to $17.1T (with $0.9T in savings from better prevention more than offset by $8.5T in new preventive spending). *

Note that these numbers are only for the effects of preventive care on medical spending; they do not include the health benefits of the preventive care. The authors also estimate that fully implementing the prevention activities would prevent 63% of all heart attacks and 31% of all strokes, increasing adult life expectancy by over a year. In total, the $7.6 trillion would buy 244 million additional quality-adjusted life-years, for an average cost of $36,380 per QALY.

* I notice that I am confused: the number "162%" appears in the paper in reference to this spending increase, but I can't figure out what it refers to. Going from $9.5T to $17.1T is an 80% increase.