The many fatal strokes and heart attacks resulting from untreated hypertension cause insignificant medical expenditures but large economic losses of other sorts.

The cost, per patient, of preventive treatment for hypertension would remain constant even if such treatment were instituted on a large scale.

In matters of health care, economic considerations should ideally not be dominant.

Effective prevention presupposes early diagnosis, and programs to ensure early diagnosis are costly.

The net savings in medical resources achieved by some preventive health measures are smaller than the net losses attributable to certain other measures of this kind.