PREVENTION SAVES LIVES AND REDUCES HEALTH SPENDING

Abstract

Maintaining a health system, at the highest level of performance and ensuring the health needs for the population, is a major challenge for all states. Health expenditures are constantly increasing, being influenced by technological progress in the field, innovative treatments or aging of the population in correlation with the existence of chronic diseases related to age. An important component in reducing health expenditure is prevention, medical conditions can be detected in the early stage, and their treatment requiring significantly lower costs compared to aggravated forms of the disease. For the period 2014 – 2018, Romania has allocated, on average, over 68% fewer financial allocations for prevention (out of GDP), compared to the European Union average, while countries such as Italy, Finland, Sweden, Germany and the Netherlands have allocations between 27 and 36% above the European average. Romania ranks, at European Union level, on the penultimate position, allocating 0.08% of GDP (2018) for prevention in health, with a direct impact on the number of critical patients and high treatment costs.