When the state paid, people stopped smoking: study
Source: Reuters By: Maggie Fox When Massachusetts started paying for stop-smoking treatments, people not only kicked the habit but also had fewer heart attacks, researchers reported on Tuesday in the first study to show a clear payoff from investing in smoking prevention efforts. Smoking dropped by 10 percent among clients of Medicaid, the state health insurance plan for the poor, and nearly 40 percent of Medicaid patients who smoked used benefits to get nicotine patches or drugs to help them quit, the researchers said. The study -- which suggests states can save money from investing in efforts to cut smoking -- found the yearly rate of hospital admissions for heart attacks fell by 46 percent for Medicaid clients and 49 percent fewer of them were hospitalized for clogged arteries. "The dramatic decline in heart attack hospitalizations for smokers who used the benefit is stunning and demonstrates the effectiveness of tobacco treatment coverage that includes behavioral counseling and medicines approved by the Food and Drug Administration," American Heart Association CEO Nancy Brown, who was not involved in the research, said in a statement. Thomas Land and colleagues at the Massachusetts Tobacco Cessation and Prevention Program, as well as the Harvard Medical School, looked at hospital records for the study, published in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Medicine. In July 2006, the Massachusetts Medicaid program, called MassHealth, began paying for drugs and other treatments to help smokers quit, including nicotine patches, gum and drugs. "Over 75,000 Medicaid subscribers used the [...]