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Article: Health care in Alaska: poised for progress: efforts are being made to prevent illness and decrease health insurance costs.(Special Series: Part One of Two-Part Series)
- Article from:
- Alaska Business Monthly
- Article date:
- April 1, 2007
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2007 Alaska Business Publishing Company, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Alaska has many excellent health care facilities and practitioners, with more spent on health care per capita than any other state. However, Alaska, like the rest of the United States, gets less bang for the buck than other industrialized countries. The state and federal system is broken in that priorities are backward. Currently major funding and many systems are oriented toward fixing people once something goes wrong, versus keeping them healthy in the first place.
The resounding theme, need and opportunity is prevention:
* The Bad News: Prevention is the orphan of the health care system.
* The Good News: There is increasing awareness of the ...