Some people think that it is more important for the government to spend money to promote healthy lifestyle to prevent disease than to spend it on treatment for people who are already ill. To what extent to you agree or disagree?
One of the most fundamental duties of government is to ensure healthy life for every citizen. Though there are many arguments about whether state ought to spend more money for promoting healthy lifestyle or to treat already diseased people, I think government should determine the most cost effective ways to improve people's health by both promoting healthy lifestyle and treating ill.
One one side of the argument, there are people who belief that arranging programs to promote healthy lifestyle can lead to population wide risk reduction and cost savings. Unhealthy behavior, such as poor diet, lack of physical activity and tobacco use can adversely affect health and bring some chronic fatal diseases along with. These chronic diseases could be prevented by simply developing public awareness about those harmful habits and their consequences. This is no doubt much less expensive than for investing money to treat actually ill people. For example, banning of smoking in public place in US reduced the incidence of lung cancer and it saved some million dollar of state's money.
There are also some people who belief that government should spend more money for treatment of already diseased individual. The most important reason for having this belief is perhaps they think that wrong lifestyle is not the only cause which makes people ill. people may become sick when they get old or someone can get it by inheritence. If government refused to help those people then it would not also create disharmony in the society but also make government responsible for killing them indirectly. For instance, in Florida a seven year old boy who had leukemia would have not survived if government did not take the necessary step to cure his disease.
To sum