A broken bank balance can break you your heart too

Patients who have trouble paying their medical bills do significantly worse in the year after heart attacks the patients under less financial pressure, a new study finds. In the study, which appeared last week in the journal of the American Medical Association, the researchers surveyed almost 2,500 patients when they were hospitalized for heart attacks. Although most of the patients were insured, the researchers found that almost one in five reported that financial barriers had led them to avoid health care over the previous year. More than one in 10 said they had not been able to afford some medications. Dr. Harian M. Krumholz of Yale and his co-authors found that a year after the heart attacks; there were 12 per cent more cases. of angina among the patients who had reported financial barriers.