Between 2014 and 2018, the number of Medicare beneficiaries on cholesterol drugs went up, but total costs plummeted. DALLAS – Sept. 9, 2020 – The switch from brand name to generic cholesterol medications that occurred between 2014 and 2018 has saved Medicare billions of dollars, even as the number of people on cholesterol-lowering drugs has increased, UT Southwestern scientists have calculated. Their data, published in the journal JAMA Cardiology, suggest that policymakers and clinicians could help cut Medicare costs even further by switching more patients to generic drugs. “One of the most important contributors to our health care costs is expenditure on prescription drugs,” says Ambarish Pandey, M.D., a cardiologist and assistant professor of internal medicine at UTSW. “The switch to generics is an effective strategy to cut the costs incurred by health systems.” Who is Dr. Ambarish Pandey? Dr. Pandey is originally from India and received his initial medical training at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India. Drawn by the research and academic opportunities in the United States, he completed post-doctoral training in Nanomedicine at the Brigham and Women Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston. He subsequently completed internal medicine residency and cardiology fellowship training, and Master of Science in Clinical Sciences at UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas. Dr Pandey brings to UTSW a strong background in general cardiology, epidemiology, and clinical research. He currently specializes in general cardiology with a focus on cardiovascular disease prevention. Dr Pandey’s interests outside of medicine include his family, cricket, and movies. Pandey is considered a thought leader in how to leverage information gleaned from electronic health records and other health databases. Dr Ambarish Pandey was named a Texas Health Resources Clinical Scholar in 2018 and has previously published papers on how much extended-release drugs cost the U.S. health care system, the burden of heart failure and heart attack-associated hospital readmission and mortality in the Medicare population, and the development of novel strategies to predict and prevent heart failure in this population, among other topics. “It’s important for our health care system to find avenues to become more cost-efficient…