Yes, sometimes it is cheaper to be sick. And as you'll read in this article by David Brown from the Washington Post, people who live long, healthy lives may end up costing the health care system more than people who get really sick and die young as a result of, say, cigarette smoking or diabetes. Quoting:
Does that mean we shouldn't try to get people to quit smoking or lose weight?
Of course not, says Louise Russell, the "Is Prevention Better Than Cure?" author who is now a research professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey.
"People are important, their health is important, and we want to make their lives better in a variety of ways," Russell said. "The point of the medical-care system is to serve people. It is not the point of people to serve the medical-care system."
Prevention can be a great investment, but it's still an investment. Nothing in the modern health-care economy is cheap."
