For people who suffer from severe depression, a small, pacemaker-like device offers hope to live a near-normal life, but most insurance companies won?t cover the $25,000 to $30,000 price tag.
The vagus nerve stimulator delivers a small, periodic electric jolt to the brain through electrodes attached to the vagus nerve in the throat. In clinical trials, it improved the lives of 60 percent of the subjects.
“What I worry about is for folks with a mental illness, there continues to be a stigma,” said Dr. Scott Aaronson, a researcher with Sheppard Pratt Health System in Baltimore.
“If we showed these kinds of results for a cancer treatment it would be funded, no question.”
Aaronson said the product?s maker, Cyberonics, has donated 100 devices nationwide to test and prove its product.
The patients? depression is so severe, Aaronson said, that nationwide 12 have committed suicide while waiting for an available device.
Thoughthe device costs as much as a new car, he said, the medical cost of caring for and medicating these patients can be as high as $10,000 to $15,000 a year. Insurance companies could recoup their money in as little as two years.
