Meditation Can Reduce Health Care Costs

Stress can contribute to a wide array of health problems, and finding ways to reduce stress could presumably impact overall health care costs as well. A new study suggests that meditation can do just that.

According to the research, people with consistently high health care costs experienced a 28 percent cumulative decrease in physician fees after an average of five years practicing the stress-reducing Transcendental Meditation technique compared with their baseline.

The study is published in the September/October 2011 issue of the American Journal of Health Promotion.

Experts have recognized that in most populations, a small fraction of people account for the majority of health care costs.

In the U.S., the highest spending 10 percent in the general population incurred 60 percent to 70 percent of total medical expenditures annually.

In the Medicare population, the highest spending 5 percent incurred 43 percent of total Medicare costs, and the highest spending 25 percent of seniors accounted for 85 percent of total expenses.

Individuals in these groups have consistently high medical bills year after year. (MORE)

Source: Psych Central