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In yet another distressing health report released this week, the high cost of health coverage is leading to the suffering and early demise of Americans, this time by making cholesterol lowering treatments too expensive to use.

According to MSN Health, many patients taking statins to lower their cholesterol stop taking the drugs because of co-payments and shared drug costs. Statins are manmade chemical compounds, taken in pill form, that limit the natural production of LDL (bad cholesterol) in the body.

And, new changes in the prescription medication coverage in health coverage plans like Medicare (among many others), make these life-saving cholesterol lowering drugs impossible to afford.

The real irony here is that, though health insurance agencies save money in the short term by making drugs expensive, by making some drugs too expensive they end up costing themselves us much as the consumer. Cholesterol lowering drugs save lives and prevent heart attacks, and as it says in the article, “the cost to insurance companies to treat a heart attack is far more than the cost to prevent one."

One option might be generic drugs, which are more affordable and available via most health coverage plans. Consumers just need to make sure that their particular plan includes generic drug coverage to enjoy the benefits of statins without the whollop to their pocketbook.