In Tennessee, Health Insurance Fights Higher Rates Of Heart Attack And Stroke
Some of us have a much higher risk of heart disease and stroke than others
, so it can be critical to understand your risk and take preventive action. This is especially important for residents of Tennessee. That state has an unusually high death rate from heart disease and stoke, but research is pointing to ways to reduce the risk.Newer research is looking into how statin drugs affect people at high risk for heart attacks and strokes. Statins refer to a category of drugs, including Lipitor (atorvastatin), Mevacor (lovastatin), Pravachol (pravastatin), and Zocor (simvastatin), that are typically used to prevent cardiovascular events. Doctors at Johns Hopkins now say that millions more people could benefit from statins than current medication-prescribing guidelines suggest.
Can Statins Protect People Even Before Risk Factors Appear?
It's accepted that statins can help prevent subsequent heart attacks and strokes for people who have already suffered such an event. Statins have also been shown to protect patients who haven't experienced either a heart attack or stroke, but who are at high risk for cardiovascular disease.
Diabetes is one of the factors that contributes to cardiovascular-disease risk. An estimated 33 million people are considered to have such risk factors, and are currently eligible to take statins. That's mainly men age 50 or older, and women age 60 or older.
Going beyond these accepted standards, doctors at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and its Heart and Vascular Institute have found evidence that many more people could benefit from statins.
Assistant professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and its Heart and Vascular Institute, Erin D. Michos, M.D., M.H.S., notes that about half of all cardiovascular events happen to people who do not have high cholesterol. Approximately 20 percent of cardiovascular events happen to people who have no identifiable cardiovascular disease risk factors, at all.
Could People With No Risk Factors Benefit From Statins?
To understand this better, a research team led by doctors at Brigham and Women's Hospital involved nearly 18,000 patients. Researchers found that statins protect against heart attacks and strokes even in older people who have no known cardiovascular disease or diabetes, and who have low cholesterol (below 130 mg/dl).
Statins are not usually prescribed for those with low cholesterol as long as they also have high levels of C-reactive protein (CRP). That's a blood marker for inflammation, and research has shown that inflammation is a key factor in initiating cardiovascular events. Surprisingly, at-risk patients aren't routinely tested for CRP levels.
Michos and Johns Hopkins cardiology professor Roger S. Blumenthal, M.D. tried to estimate how many people with low-cholesterol and high-CRP could benefit from taking statins. They used data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, which has gathered health information from thousands of Americans since 1971. This data is weighted in order to produce a representative picture of the larger U.S. population.
Looking at data from 1999 through 2004, and extrapolating results to the general population, Blumenthal and Michos estimated that about 6.5 million older adults with low cholesterol and high CRP could benefit from statins. In fact, with the cholesterol level cutoff of 160 mg/dl that doctors use to determine whether to prescribe statins, as many as 10 million people could potentially benefit from statin therapy.
Michos said, "We're showing that doctors may be able to prevent thousands of heart attacks, strokes and deaths each year if we expand statin-prescribing criteria to include C-reactive protein levels, something we can assess as part of a simple blood test."
In their study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, the researchers point out that prescribing statins to older adults using this new criteria to incorporate CRP would prevent about 260,000 cardiovascular events in just five years.
Tennessee Health Insurance Is A Big Factor In Statin Therapy
When deciding whether to begin taking statin drugs, there's a lot to consider. Once begun, statin therapy may continue for life. True, generic drugs do cost less, but treatment is still expensive. On the other hand, life-threatening consequences are even more costly. If you do suffer a heart attack or stroke, recovery may require extensive, and costly, rehab.
Most doctors think that the benefits of statin drugs outweigh the side effects, but a course of statins for a year costs between $900 and $1400. In the US, statins bring in 12.5 billion dollars annually for pharmaceutical companies. Sales of Lipitor, the number-one-selling statin, have been expected to reach 10 billion dollars a year.
Fortunately, health insurance in Tennessee usually picks up most of the cost for statin therapy. Without this coverage, statin therapy (as well as many other life-saving possibilities) is just out-of-reach for many of us.
With reform beginning to affect health insurance, now is the optimum time to look for new policies. Get a more comprehensive overview of how policies from different insurers compare by getting help from independent insurance agents. When they work with plans from several insurers, they can give you a wider range in both coverage and pricing.
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