It becomes more and more accepted that society needs to consider health and healthcare as an investment, not as a cost. Health promotion, i.e. keeping people healthy is considered thereby as “the best buy”. Keeping people healthy contributes to an increased healthy life expectancy. However, the reality of the past 2 decades shows a larger increase in life expectancy than in healthy life expectancy. In other words, people live longer with disease compared to 20 years ago. In order to stop this negative trend, the health production model is proposed, whereby all possibilities to leverage healthy ageing are considered, including health promotion, social and commercial determinants of disease, early detection, an integrated approach to disease in order to reduce morbidity, and the use of innovative health technologies. In order to advice policy makers about the choices to make, the concept of value for money needs to be accounted for. This will be explained in the lecture together with several examples. The main focus thereby should be adding life to years rather than years to life.