Abstract for: Evaluating the Preventive Treatments for Aging Populations in terms of Financial Sustainability of Health Systems

Chronic diseases with increasing prevalence rates, is one of the biggest burdens for health care systems. Preventive interventions are successful in decreasing the disease prevalence rates for population groups with risk factors. For the ones who already developed the disease, the secondary to tertiary prevention programs are run to keep the disease under control while also educating the patients for their own disease management. The purpose of this study is to construct a generic simulation model to understand the long-term outcomes of various prevention interventions in terms of cost effectiveness. Overuse of preventive health care services (moral hazard), effect of cost sharing (copayment) on the utilization of the services, overdiagnosis due to too much preventive effort are included in the model. In this study, we present the changes in outcomes when different levels of prevention programs are applied. The generic model is applicable to specific chronic diseases for specific population groups. The model outputs indicate that, prevention programs provide benefits for the whole population. Diseased people stay in good health status and healthy people enjoy the lower premium level resulting from lowered overall healthcare expenditures