Although preventative services such as routine well-care visits and immunizations have often shown to be beneficial in terms of preventing future, more expensive, health care encounters, not all insurance plans offer reimbursement for such things. In addition, health care policies have only recently begun to recognize the "worth" of funding prevention-related services.
Why has funding preventative health care services has taken so long to become a major component of health plans?
What will need to happen to change the prevailing mindset of funding health care services reactively versus proactively from a third-party payer's and an administrator's perspective? Why?