U.S. Wastes More Than Half of Health Spending

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 21:16:02 GMT

clipped by: BobbyDelray

Health care isn’t exactly known for its efficiency, but a new analysis from PricewaterhouseCoopers puts the value of the waste sloshing around in the system at a whopping $1.2 trillion a year.

That’s right. Trillion–with a T. The findings of the firm’s Health Research Institute suggest that up to that much “wasteful spending” could be going on, more than half the $2.2 trillion spent on health care in this country.

including ineffective use of information technology ($81-$88 billion), claims processing, ($21-$210 billion) and defensive medicine ($210 billion). Medical errors cost $17 billion and badly-managed diabetes is tied to $22 billion.

the analysis adds to a growing pile of other research (including the granddaddy of the genre, the Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care) focused on unnecessary health-care expenditures.

Lovastatin Shown To Slow Progression Of Alzheimer's Disease

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 18:23:39 GMT

clipped by: BobbyDelray
clipper's remarks: This is a classic example of the Alzheimer's CareGiver conundrum. I switched my mother from Lovastatin to Zocor after reading a similar article pointing out the benefits of statins.

I'll put the article up on Zocor soon.

Clip Source: www.medicalnewstoday.com

High cholesterol levels are considered to be a risk factor for cardiovascular disease including stroke. Therefore, many cholesterol lowering drugs have been developed by pharmaceutical companies in recent years. One class of these drugs, statins, has been found to reduce the incidence of stroke and progression of Alzheimer's disease when prophylactically administered.

In a recent paper published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, Amalia Dolga and co-workers from the University of Groningen show that the statin lovastatin, in addition to lowering cholesterol, can also prevent nerve cells from dying in conditions that occur in Alzheimer's disease

Amalia Dolga found that statins stimulate nerve cells to produce a specific receptor molecule for a protein which plays a central role in the body's immune response:

Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release.

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U.S. Wastes More Than Half of Health Spending

Lovastatin Shown To Slow Progression Of Alzheimer's Disease