A healthy investment.

Administering a combined measles, mumps and rubella vaccine costs U.S. recipients an estimated $100 million annually. But according to a new study by the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, that program provides $14 worth in benefits for every $1 that's spent -- as measured in health-care cost savings from cases of disease and disease complications that were avoided.

Focusing on 1983, the researchers compared actual and estimated deaths, illnesses and costs attributable to each disease against what historical data indicate would have occurred in an unvaccinated population. Their report, published in the July AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PUBLIC HEALTH, notes that the combined vaccine reduced measles incidence to 2,872 cases from the 3.325,000 that probably would have occurred, reduced mumps to 32.850 cases from a possible 2.1 million and limited rubella to 3,816 from the likely 1.5 million cases.