What price for eternal life?

But what was great news for (nyse: PFE - news - people )Pfizer and Lipitor could send shivers through the ranks of employers, insurers and millions of consumers themselves. 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.