Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
In general, you would think the answer is no. If there are multiple treatments available, patients have more choice. Further, the treatments may need to compete with one another which may lead to lower prices. One issue with drug prices is that the the list (a.k.a. gross) price affects patient cost-sharing, but the net price…
A number of different federal agencies buy prescription drugs. However, the price at which these pharmaceuticals are purchased varies dramatically. To quantify this variation, a 2021 report from the Congressional Budget Office examines the following prices: Medicare Part D: the prescription drug program for Medicare beneficiaries. Prices are set when private insurers (or pharmacy benefit…
Re-insurance is used to help insurers the cost of unpredictable, high cost events. Government re-insurance likely had a beneficial effect of attracting new firms to the market when Part D was rolled out in 2006. However, to what extent is re-insurance important for the Part D market compared to in the commercial market. A paper…
If we’re talking about Medicare’s Part D expansion to cover prescription drugs, the answer is yes according to a paper by Dunn and Shapiro (2018). We examine the impact of Medicare Part D on mortality for the population over the age of 65. We identify the effects of the reform using variation in drug coverage…
Huh and Reif (2017) have an interesting study of the effect of Medicare Part D on mortality. The abstract is below. We investigate the implementation of Medicare Part D and estimate that this prescription drug benefit program reduced elderly mortality by 2.2% annually. This was driven primarily by a reduction in cardiovascular mortality, the leading cause of…
In 2006, the Medicare program was expanded to include prescription drug coverage through the Part D program. Previous studies have found that Medicare Part D improved prescription drug coverage rates among seniors (Levy and Weir,2010), increased medication utilization (Duggan and Morton, 2010), decreased out-of-pocket spending (Engelhardt and Gruber, 2011; Ketcham and Simon, 2008), and reduced medication…
How did the enactment of Medicare Part D affect the mental health of the elderly? This is the question Ayyagari and Shane attempt to answer in their recent JHE paper. The authors use data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) between 2010 and 2010 to measure changes in depressive symptoms among patients aged 60-70.…
Medicare patients are likely to discontinue their medication in December. Why? Are they busy with the Christmas holidays? Do they have additional expenses for gifts and limited funds for prescription drugs? Perhaps. Another idea advanced by Kaplan and Zhang (2014) is that Medicare’s benefit structure encourages discontinuation. Why is that? Medicare’s Part D drug plan…
Rarely due consumers think that too much competition is a problem. According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), however, this is a major issue for consumers when they choose Part D prescription drug health plans. Avalere reports that: Proposed revisions to the meaningful differences policy will restrict the market’s top sponsors from…
…at least when it comes to prescription drugs. Health Pocket reports that the lowest cost Part D plan is the Humana/Walmart RX plan which charges a monthly premium of $12.60. In 2013, AARP MedicareRX Saver Plus from UnitedHealthcare was the lowest cost plan and charged a premium of $15. In 2014, however, the monthly premium…