Many patients with co-pay drop statins

BOSTON, April 11 (UPI) -- Patients taking statins to lower cholesterol often stop the medication because of co-pays or shared drug costs, say U.S. researchers.

Dr. Sebastian Schneeweiss, an associate professor of medicine and epidemiology at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Mass., said it makes "economic sense" for insurers to exempt patients taking medications like statins because, "the cost to treat a heart attack is far more than the cost to prevent one."

Schneeweiss and his team studied 51,561 Canadian patients who used statins to help prevent a heart attack, Health Day reported Wednesday. When patients had a $10 to $25 co-pay, 5.4 percent stopped taking the drug or reduced the Health Day reported Wednesday.

Schneeweiss said the findings are important to Americans because of the new Medicare Part D drug plan and also to private insurers, because patients pay for the drugs until a "prescribed dollar level" is reached.