Medicare patients who lack prescription drug coverage are much less likely to use statins than those who do have insurance to cover drug costs. That's the finding of a new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Researchers evaluated more than 1900 older people (age 66 or older) with a history of coronary heart disease or previous heart attack as part of a regular Medicare survey. They divided the patients into two groups: (1) those who have Medicare with no drug coverage or supplemental insurance they bought themselves, and (2) those who have Medicare plus drug coverage from Medicaid, Medigap, other public program, a health maintenance organization, or an employer-sponsored plan.

They quantified the percentage of patients who take three drugs commonly prescribed for heart disease:

	Drug	Medicare with drug coverage	Medicare without drug coverage
	Statins	27.4%	4.1%
	Beta-blockers	36.1%	20.7%
	Nitrates	38.0%	20.4%

The authors of the report note that Medicare beneficiaries who lack drug coverage have disproportionately large drug expenditures and lower use rates of statins, a class of relatively expensive dugs that improve survival. They suggest that information such as this would be useful in designing a Medicare drug program.

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