Does screening and treating high cholesterol save money? KevinMD.com

by Richard Young, MD

A commenter (I believe a physician) on one of my posts wrote the following: “I can prevent heart attacks and strokes (caused by atherosclerosis – “blockage”) in people (minimal cost) who have no symptoms. If I wait for their heart attack or stroke – it costs a whole lot more.”

The implication is that screening and treating high cholesterol saves money in the long run. Unfortunately, the truth is the opposite. This is an extremely common misconception among most people in healthcare, physicians included. Therefore the American people believe the same thing.

If I give a person a pneumonia shot and that person lives the rest of her life never catching pneumonia, then there is a fair chance I prevented a case of pneumonia. On the other hand, she may not have ever gotten pneumonia any way, therefore the shot was useless. There’s no way to sort that out, but classifying  a vaccine as preventing a disease is certainly fair.

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Drugs: Spending on prescriptions is slowing - Health Key

mericans consume a lot of prescription drugs. And they seem especially fond of those to lower their cholesterol, relieve their heartburn, cheer them up and take away pain. Overall, however, their spending on such drugs is slowing.

A new report from consulting firm IMS Health offers a quick, but thorough, look at Americans' consumption of, and spending on, prescription drugs. In 2010, the report says, we spent more than $307 billion on medication. That’s up over 2009, but only by 2.3%.

The report’s introduction frames the trend nicely: “A number of factors contributed to this comparatively and historically low growth, including fewer patient visits to doctors’ offices, patent expirations for branded products, expanded usage of existing generic products and less spending on new products.”

Now, drum roll, please...Here are the top five classes of drugs prescribed in America:

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