Prevent or cure? : a new philosophy of health care

Health care systems evolve at the same time in many different ways: in area of developing technologies, the development of the medical knowledge, because of demographical changes and particularly - aging of the society. This induces modifications of the priorities of the health policy, new methods of organization and more complex funding mechanisms. Individual components of the health care system: illness prevention and health promotion, basic health care, hospital care have different contribution into the health care systems of different countries. The worlds growing awareness that for keeping and improving the population health the governments must create effective and efficient health system leads to the effective illness prevention. It shouldn't be expected that the health effects and economic efficiency of the health care system will improve, without appropriate expenditures on actions which delay or prevent illness, and also allow early diagnosis and effective (usually cheaper) treatment. In the first part of the paper there will be discussed issues connected with modern health conceptions which create the fundaments of the approach to the illness prevention. Health care is the specific public goods. This induces the choice of criteria, used by policy makers, to allocate public sources. In the second part the crucial significance is to specify the determinant of the changes of the health benefits structures financed from the public means. The last part of this elaboration, based on gathered empirical data, will discussed experiences of the selected European countries on prevention of the selected illnesses, indicating the links between expenditures and the effects of the prevention activities.