Question

It is more important to spend public money on promoting a healthy lifestyle in order to prevent illness than to spend it on treatment of people who are already ill. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

Answer 1

Recently, some people claim that public funding should be either invested equally in raising residents’ awareness and improving medical therapy or focusing only on health care facilities. But in my perspective, the national authority should spend the public budget on campaigns that can change citizens’ minds. This essay will explain some reasons for my view.

On the one hand, people believe that treatment for sick people should receive higher social funding. That public money may be poured into ameliorating the healthcare facilities and buying high-quality medicine. As a result, those who are confronted with illnesses or diseases will receive better services and modern facilities, and then they can have a higher chance of survival. Moreover, some people also claim that the public budgets should be should equally for the two sides, including helping sick people and raising awareness. However, this idea of sharing the public funding for both social issues may sound satisfying but it is not practical at all. Due to the limited funding of the government, this would lead to the fact that neither curing nor promotion would be dealt with effectively. Hence, the expected result for the citizens might not be achieved thoroughly. 

In my opinion, raising the general public’s awareness of a healthy lifestyle deserves to receive more attention from the authorities, especially in terms of funding. First of all, it is true that most of the life-threatening illnesses today stem from poor lifestyles. By organizing public campaigns on this topic, the residents would have more knowledge on how to lead a healthy life and also be more responsible for their lifestyle options, such as food choices, working out, or performing regular health checkups. With this problem being improved, it would lessen the number of ill people, leading to a general improvement in public health. Besides, the expenditure on healthcare services could reduce, putting much less pressure on the residents and the government. 

In summary, there are a lot of arguments about different aspects of this phenomenon. In my view, I still strongly believe that people should pay more attention to developing a healthy lifestyle system for the locals rather than pouring money into enhancing treatment for infected patients.