{"id":13784,"date":"2011-11-15T11:52:59","date_gmt":"2011-11-15T16:52:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/?post_type=fellowship-training&p=13784"},"modified":"2011-11-15T11:52:59","modified_gmt":"2011-11-15T16:52:59","slug":"mi-free-a-free-lunch-for-patients-and-insurers-alike","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/2011\/11\/15\/mi-free-a-free-lunch-for-patients-and-insurers-alike\/","title":{"rendered":"MI FREE: A Free Lunch for Patients and Insurers Alike?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Several Cardiology Fellows who are attending AHA.11 this week are blogging together on CardioExchange.\u00a0 The Fellows include\u00a0Revathi Balakrishnan<\/a>,<\/a> Eiman Jahangir<\/a>, John Ryan<\/a> (moderator), and Amit Shah<\/a>. Read the previous post here<\/a>. Check back often to learn about the biggest buzz in Orlando.<\/em><\/p>\n

In MI-FREEE presented by Dr. Niteesh Choudhry today at AHA and published online in the New England Journal of Medicine<\/a>, 5855 AETNA-insured patients were randomized at discharge for MI patients to either normal coverage or no copay for statins, beta blockers, ACE inhibitors and ARBs. Patients in the no-copay group were significantly less likely to have another major cardiac event (MI, angina, heart failure, or stroke) compared with the normal coverage group: 11 per 100 person-years vs 12.8 per 100 person-years, respectively; P<\/em>=0.03). Not surprisingly, removing copay increased medication adherence.<\/p>\n

What did surprise me was that this protocol so substantially decreased costs for\u00a0 Aetna \u2014 which sponsored the trial \u2014 that they are now introducing the Aetna Rx Healthy Outcomes program, which will decrease copays for MI patients.<\/p>\n

There is often skepticism surrounding the results of pharmaceutical-sponsored trials in light of the financial benefits to the company. Here removing copays saved Aetna over $5000 per patient, with a total pool of 40 million people covered by Aetna insurance plans. Should the same concerns that apply to pharmaceutical-sponsored research apply to the insurance industry? Why or why not?<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Removing copays increased adherence, decreased events, and saved the sponsoring insurance company a tidy sum. So are the issues with insurance-sponsored studies different from those with pharmaceutical-sponsored ones?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":280,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,7],"tags":[1036,195,1040,245,961],"class_list":["post-13784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-prevention","tag-aha-scientific-sessions","tag-fellowship-training-2","tag-insurance","tag-mi","tag-secondary-prevention"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/280"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13784"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13784\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}