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Medicare Part D's Effects on Elderly Drug Costs and Utilization

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  • Jonathan D. Ketcham
  • Kosali Simon

Abstract

We analyze Medicare Part D’s net effect on elderly out-of-pocket (OOP) costs and use of prescription drugs using a dataset containing 1.4 billion prescription records from Wolters Kluwer Health (WKH). These data span the period December 2004-December 2007 and include pharmacy customers whose age as of 2007 is greater than 57 years. The outcomes we examine are OOP cost per day’s supply of a medication, the days of medication supplied per capita, and the number of individuals filling prescriptions. We compare outcomes before vs. after January 2006, for those over age 66 years vs. for those age 58-64 years, adjusting for the under-reporting of certain cash-only transactions in the WKH data. Our results indicate that from 2005-2007, Part D reduced elderly OOP costs per day’s supply of medication by 21.7%, and increased elderly use of prescription drugs by 4.7%, implying a price elasticity of demand of -0.22. These effects occurred primarily during the first year of the program. An age- and time-standardized comparison of our quantity results with previous estimates from Walgreens data shows that our findings are 2.6 times as large. We conclude that Part D lowered elderly patients’ OOP costs substantially and increased utilization modestly, and note that in comparing results across studies on this topic, magnitudes may vary substantially due to differences in data and methods.

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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 14326.

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Date of creation: Sep 2008
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Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:14326

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  1. Mark Duggan & Fiona Scott Morton, 2010. "The Effect of Medicare Part D on Pharmaceutical Prices and Utilization," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(1), pages 590-607, March.
  2. Dana Goldman & Tomas Philipson, 2007. "Integrated Insurance Design in the Presence of Multiple Medical Technologies," NBER Working Papers 12870, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  3. Margaret E. Blume-Kohout & Neeraj Sood, 2008. "The Impact of Medicare Part D on Pharmaceutical R&D," NBER Working Papers 13857, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  4. Helen Levy & David Weir, 2007. "Take-Up of Medicare Part D and the SSA Subsidy: Early Results from the Health and Retirement Study," Working Papers wp163, University of Michigan, Michigan Retirement Research Center.
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Cited by:
  1. Gary V. Engelhardt & Jonathan Gruber, 2009. "Medicare Part D and the Financial Protection of the Elderly," Working Papers, Center for Retirement Research at Boston College wp2009-24, Center for Retirement Research, revised Oct 2009.
  2. Darius N. Lakdawalla & Wesley Yin, 2010. "Insurers' Negotiating Leverage and the External Effects of Medicare Part D," NBER Working Papers 16251, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  3. Gary V. Engelhardt & Jonathan Gruber, 2010. "Medicare Part D and the Financial Protection of the Elderly," NBER Working Papers 16155, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  4. Claudio Lucarelli & Sean Nicholson & Minjae Song, 2010. "Bundling Among Rivals: A Case of Pharmaceutical Cocktails," NBER Working Papers 16321, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  5. Darius Lakdawalla & Wesley Yin, 2009. "Insurer Bargaining and Negotiated Drug Prices in Medicare Part D," NBER Working Papers 15330, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

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