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FT editor Rula Khalf, selects his favorite stories in this weekly newspaper.

Author is the chief executive of the office of Health Economics, a research organization

The much awaited NHS 10-year plan is expected to be within a week. Prevention will be at its origin – but it is almost certain that we will find the funding part wrong.

This labor is not the government’s fault. Nor can you blame its conservative predecessors. This is beyond political sacrifice: real diagnosis is short -sightedness, both and in public policy.

There is a fundamental economic principle that explains why we work against our future interests. This is why we smoke, or eat too much processed food, or order a delivery food instead of cooking: it gives us pleasure in the moment; All this may be that we can bear now; It saves time. Economists call it “current prejudice”, today prioritize small satisfaction on very large but long -term benefits.

It is the same reason that governments do not spend enough on prevention, despite heavy evidence that it is at least three to four times more cost effective than treatment-even more vaccinations such as some interventions. The problem is that it usually costs a lot of cost but the benefit is only later.

It has been terminated by NHS Being in triage mode, congestion with prevention with spending on acute care. For proper prevention of funds, current ministers will have to pay advance for the benefits received under future governments.

This is where another principle comes: Missing of encouragement. A smoker is unlikely to consider the cost of treatment of cancer – they are fully covered by NHS. They pay the same tax in the form of a non-dumping and do not tolerate costs, so their encouragement to prevent smoking is not align.

Of course, it is true that humans are complex and uncontrolled, much like NHS, with behavior that cannot be fully explained by simple economic rules. Healthcare is not present in a vacuum, so it requires a more overall approach to health to fix it. The fact is that, NHS is always expected to set the bill, even if the benefits of prevention are over.

We don’t need to see health Cost To be managed, but instead a property is to be developed. This means that healthcare should go beyond NHS. We need a new consent on prevention-with this government enhancing health above short-term political cycles. It would be important to invest in non-health areas such as environment and social care, as well as with clampdown where market failures are harming our country’s health-from technical algorithms to zero-hour contracts and poor housing.

It is as important to address these “non-health” factors as cutting in waiting time or increasing GP appointments.

Incentives need to be better aligned. Reducing the loss of productivity due to sick health should not fall on NHS alone. Employers have a role in the health of workers, including investing in distance work or workplace vaccination schemes. There was cooperation between the government and businesses on the workforce health Mefield reviewTax exemption and support for business health may proceed.

We also need to rethink funding. We should need a prevention budget to grow at a faster rate than overall health funding. Contracts of innovative suppliers – can help address high upfront costs by results or with payment over time. We need to unlock new sources of funds such as a dedicated prevention fund (such as cancer or innovative drugs) funded by the government, but out of day-to-day NHS expenses. In the long term, the savings generated by such funds will be greater than investment.

We know that prevention stops payment – our research shows that if you evaluate the full spectrum of vaccines beyond the health system, they return to 19 times from the initial investment. Society has billions of pounds in net profit. With prevention, we all stand to win so we all should play our share.