More on the Warped Market: How one study can dramatically increase healthcare costs when the consumer isn't paying the bill:

The biggest implication of the new study is that Lipitor and other statins, now taken by 11 million Americans at a cost of almost $14 billion a year, might also benefit tens of millions more patients than doctors had ever expected. This could prevent hundreds of thousands of heart attacks annually--yet it would add tens of billions of dollars to the nation's already-bloated bill for prescription drugs.

What's more, it won't really decrease the chances of a heart attack all that much for each individual. Using high dose Lipitor decreases the chances of having a heart attack by about four percentage points. How many of us would pay $120 a month for a four percent improvement? Very few. But far more of us would ask someone else to pay $120 a month to give us that small advantage.