February 1st, 2011 by RyanDuBosar in News, Research
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Real total direct medical costs of cardiovascular disease (CVD) could triple, from $273 billion to $818 billion (in 2008 dollars) by 2030. Real indirect costs, such as lost productivity among the employed and unpaid household work, could increase 61 percent, from $172 billion in 2010 to $276 billion.
Results appeared in a policy statement of the American Heart Association.
CVD is the leading cause of mortality and accounts for 17 percent of national health expenditures, according to the statement. How much so? U.S. medical expenditures rose from 10 percent of the Gross Domestic Product in 1985 to 15 percent in 2008. In the past decade, the medical costs of CVD have grown at an average annual rate of 6 percent and have accounted for about 15 percent of the increase in medical spending.
The spending is associated with greater life expectancy, “suggesting that this spending was of value,” the authors wrote. But as the population ages, direct treatment costs are expected to increase substantially, even though lost productivity won’t, since seniors are employed at lower rates.
If current prevention and treatment rates remain steady, CVD prevalence will increase by about 10 percent over the next 20 years. The estimate reflects an aging population, and one that is increasingly Hispanic. To prepare for future cardiovascular care needs, the American Heart Association projected future costs. By 2030, 40.5 percent (116 million) of the population is projected to have some form of CVD. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*
December 13th, 2010 by PJSkerrett in Better Health Network, Health Tips, News, Research
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Stroke killed 2,000 fewer Americans in 2008 (the last year with complete numbers) than it did in 2007, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said yesterday in its latest annual Deaths report. That dropped stroke from the third leading cause of death in the United States to the fourth.
Good news? Yes and no. It’s always good news when fewer people die. The reduction suggests a payoff for efforts to prevent stroke and improve the way doctors treat it.
Yet the drop from third to fourth place is due largely to an accounting change. The CDC reorganized another category, “chronic lower respiratory diseases” (mainly chronic bronchitis and emphysema), to include complications of these diseases such as pneumonia. The change substantially increased the number of deaths in this category, which had long trailed stroke as the fourth leading cause of death.
More worrisome is that the decline in deaths from stroke isn’t matched by a decline in the number of strokes. On the rise since 1988, stroke now strikes almost 800,000 Americans a year, and that is expected to grow. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Harvard Health Blog*
December 2nd, 2010 by John Mandrola, M.D. in Better Health Network, News, Opinion, Research
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In treating atrial fibrillation (AF), this year has witnessed some real excitement. And not all the good news has to do with new pills. Recently, there has been a flurry of encouraging and objective news on ablating AF. Here are some comments on three notable studies that address three important questions:
1. What are the “long-term” success rates of AF ablation?
On this important question comes an American Heart Association (AHA) abstract from the highly-regarded lab of Dr. Karl-Heinz Kuck in Hamburg. They report on a relatively young cohort of 161 patients who underwent AF ablation (using standard pulmonary vein isolation techniques) in 2003-2004. At an average of five years of follow up, more than 80 percent were either AF-free or “clinically improved.”
Real-world impression: Although late recurrences of AF years after successful ablation have been reported, my impression (having started with AF ablation in 2004) is that most who are AF-free off drugs after one year have remained AF-free thus far. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Dr John M*
November 30th, 2010 by AndrewSchorr in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Opinion
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We are invading their home turf. Increasingly, in among the thousands of doctors, scientists, and medical industry marketers at the largest medical conventions you are finding real patients who have the conditions discussed in the scientific sessions and exhibit halls. Patients like me want to be where the news breaks. We want to ask questions and — thanks to the Internet — we have a direct line to thousands of other patients waiting to know what new developments mean for them.
I vividly remember attending an FDA drug hearing a few years ago and how there were stock analysts sitting in the audience, BlackBerries poised for the “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” on whether a proposed new drug would be recommended for approval. (At that session it was thumbs down.) When the analysts got their thumbs moving, a biotech stock tanked in minutes and before long the company was announcing layoffs. Those analysts were powerful reporters.
Now patients are reporters, too, and their thumbs are just as powerful. So are their video cameras and microphones. These folks are a different breed than the folks from CNN or the scientist/journalists from MedPageToday. Their questions are all-encompassing: “What do the discussions about my disease or condition here mean for me? What should change in my treatment plan? What gives me hope? What’s important for my family to know?” Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Andrew's Blog*
November 20th, 2010 by DrRich in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Opinion
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Q. What’s the difference between a public health expert and an incompetent doctor?
A. An incompetent doctor tends to kill only one person at a time.
The deep recession and jobless “recovery” which we have enjoyed in the U.S. for going on three years now was triggered by the bursting of the housing bubble. The housing bubble was created by lending practices that awarded “subprime” mortgages to people with bad credit ratings, and offered to people with good credit ratings adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs) that enticed them to purchase more expensive homes than they could afford.
Traditionally, banks were always reluctant to award mortgages, of any flavor, to people who obviously could not afford them, since doing so would wreck their businesses. The reason the banks began making bad loans in the 1990s is that new government policies, chiefly the Community Reinvestment Act, strongly “encouraged” them to.
The banks, being businesses, reacted logically to the new regulatory climate, to threats by ACORN and other activist groups, and to the escape hatch opened for them by the government which allowed them to turn over their toxic mortgages immediately to Fanny and Freddie. Banks quickly began turning out as many questionable mortgages as they could write, to as many uncreditworthy individuals as they could find. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at The Covert Rationing Blog*
