It's definitely in the public's best interest.
From many aspects, even with many chronic diseases, we have great evidence to show that preemptively dealing with these saves us a lot of money and problems in the long term. Denying people basic medications for diabetes, hypertension, and asthma from a public health point of view makes no sense. If we're talking about infectious diseases, waiting until people present to the emergency room with their active tuberculosis means there's a very good chance they have exposed many other people. This is not something where they may have just infected their family members. This is the kind of infection that can be transmitted in shopping malls, bowling alleys, wherever people may go. It becomes very difficult to find people before they have already transmitted to others.