A relatively small force of community social workers played a significant role in preventing 165,000 premature deaths across the U.S. in 2015. Our recently concluded research indicates that they did this by guiding at-risk men and women to preventive treatments and early detection of common killers, such as colon cancer and diabetes.
Let's set aside, for a moment, the moral victory represented by each life saved and look at what this means from the standpoint of exploding medical costs and health-care policy. Although some find the idea repugnant, you actually can put a dollar value on a human life.
If we accept the most conservative estimate of $3.3 million, the efforts of community health workers in 2015 were worth $545 billion to the U.S. economy. To put that in perspective, the healthcare legislation that stalled in Congress last month promised savings of $321 billion to $420 billion, primarily by reducing care for millions of Americans.
[For more on this story by KEN SAGYNBEKOV, go to http://thehill.com/opinion/hea...may-save-health-care]
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