Pound Wise & Penny Foolish

MyHealthVillage is a portal provided by Longitude Health, Inc. One of Longitude Health’s goals is to help people take steps toward a healthier life style.

Does giving people information about diet, exercise, and stress management really make a difference in preventing illness? How does lifestyle counseling compare to the effectiveness of procedures like coronary artery bypass surgery or angioplasty?

In these times of limited resources, what would be the best use of our healthcare dollars? Here’s what Jane Brody had to say in a recent New York Times article.

“The treatments — coronary artery bypass surgery, angioplasty and the placement of drug-coated stents — cost about $60 billion a year in the United States. Though they are not known to prevent heart attacks or coronary mortality in most patients, they are covered by insurance.”

 “Counseling patients about diet, exercise and stress management — which is relatively inexpensive and has been proved to be life-extending — is rarely reimbursed. In other words, procedure-oriented modern cardiology is pound wise and penny foolish.”

Dr. Michael Ozner, who received the 2008 American Heart Association Humanitarian Award, was quoted in this article. He said, “If some of the billions spent on intervention were put into prevention, we’d have a much healthier America at a lower cost.”

You might want to read Dr. Ozner’s new book called The Great American Heart Hoax. In the meantime, learn more about diet, exercise, and stress management at MyHealthVillage.