Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
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.…
There have been a number of efforts emphasize the importance of mental health and put mental health treatments at the same level of respect as physical health. For instance, there was the Mental Health Parity Act of 1996 and also The Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008 (MHPAEA) , which: …requires group…
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…
Specialty drugs have greatly improved quality and duration of life for many patients. Specialty drugs have been developed for a variety of illnesses, such as cancer, hepatitis C, rheumatoid arthritis, and multiple sclerosis. However, these drugs are typically very expensive. Are they worth the cost? A paper by Chambers et al. (2014) find the following: …specialty drugs offered…
Does increasing use of prescription drugs decrease cost? There is evidence on both sides of the aisle. However, a recnet paper by Deb, Trevedi and Zimmer (2014) does find evidence of cost offsets using a sophisticated copula-based bivariated dynamic hurdle model. This model, models drug and non-drugs spending and for each dimensions models the probability…
Developing drugs is expensive. Some estimates have estimated that the cost of bringing a drug to market is $1 billion. In addition, payers are now reimbursing based on the perceived value of a treatment. That is, treatments that provide more health benefits receive higher reimbursements. In this world of value-based pricing (VBP), pharmaceutical companies have…
To reduce utilization of pharmaceutical products, many countries have opted to use reference pricing. Reference pricing is a system where patient coinsurance payments depend not only on the price of the drug but also the price of alternatives therapies. As the name indicates, reference pricing sets patient coinsurance rates as the difference between the drug’s…
Making a generic version of a single molecule drug is fairly straightforward. Making a replica of a biologic treatment, however, is not. Nevertheless, Congress signed into law the Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act of 2009 (BPCI Act) to create a fast-track approval process for biological products that are demonstrated to be highly similar an FDA-approved biological product. These products…
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reviews and approves all drugs. But what criteria does the FDA use to evaluate new drugs? Namely that they are effective (i.e., improve health outcomes) and safe (i.e., have limited adverse health events). In a 2007 guidance document from the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) and…
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…