Abstract
Most developed countries have implemented healthcare systems. As reminded by Bruno Palier in The Healthcare Policy Quadrilemna, these policies were led with common objectives: "to help the sick on low incomes, then to guarantee a substitute income for salaried workers suffering from illness and, for Europeans after World War II, to ensure access to healthcare for all". They were a way to reduce the inequalities which threatened the unity of society, which is to say to increase the liberty of those whose choices were restrained by illness. Prevention has always existed, in all societies. But we can consider that its development really started at the end of the 18th century. It is constituted of cures, one of the two dimensions of health. Whereas cure occurs when a person is already sick, prevention occurs before. Today, prevention is an important stake for all countries where health expenditure is increasing while the increase of taxes or social contributions is not conceivable in a context of globalization.
