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Comment by arethuza | Hacker News Reader

What counts as preventative medicine?

A few years back I was hospitalised because of a bite on my arm from one of our cats (long story) and was given heavy doses of multiple antibiotics.

If that hadn't been treated so promptly I might have required surgery or might even have lost my arm (a nurse told me about someone who lost a leg to a cat bite!).

Edit: When I went to the hospital I had no idea how serious it was and turned up to the "Minor Injury Unit" - they had me in A&E and X-rayed within about 10 minutes!

Edit: Of course, having been in the hospital for 3 days rather than the expected hour or so I was fretting about car parking charges - turns out they are free at the point of parking....

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Preventative medicine is that which is done before significant symptoms. The basic issue, people tend to heal from most things. So the worst case of losing an arm to a cat bite is extremely unlikely. Meanwhile your hospital trip had an cost.

Suppose the odds work out to 1:100,000 lost arm vs 300$ hospital treatment. Now a lost arm is expensive but it’s not 30 million dollars expensive.

Those numbers aren’t based on anything but that’s the kinds of calculations involved. And as I mentioned the winners seem to be extremely cheap options like vacations.

Vaccinations? :-)

That was one of the examples OP cited already as a place where preventative medicine works.

I believe they are referring to a s/vaccinations/vacations typo

The poor poster is likely getting hit by triggered HN users.

On a brighter note, no one is anti-vacation.

If people don't get healthcare but still have costs of managing their symptoms. Or when people die at home, those costs aren't in the hospital books.

But they are largely on insurance companies/public healthcare systems books.

This is why vaccines are generally free out of pocket, the ROI is very positive for the insurance company.

> A few years back I was hospitalised because of a bite on my arm from one of our cats (long story) and was given heavy doses of multiple antibiotics.

And of course there's an XKCD for that:

https://xkcd.com/1775/

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