IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wpa/wuwphe/9802002.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Demand for Prescription Drugs: The Effects of Managed Care Pharmacy Benefits

Author

Listed:
  • Rika Onishi Mortimer

    (Department of Economics, University of California, Berkeley)

Abstract

This paper examines how demand for prescription drugs is influenced by different types of insurance. In order to understand demand characteristics and the competitiveness of pharmaceutical markets, both intermolecular (therapeutic) and intramolecular (generic) substitutions are studied in the antidepressant and beta blocker (anti- hypertensive) markets. Mixed logit and other discrete choice models are applied to national survey and product sales data. The results indicate that demand in managed care sectors is more price elastic than in other sectors. Demand in the self-paid sector is found to be the least price elastic, despite the fact that patients must pay for the entire cost of drugs. The results confirm the effectiveness of managed care incentives in shifting prescription patterns toward less expensive products, and suggest the existence of an agency problem between physicians and patients.

Suggested Citation

  • Rika Onishi Mortimer, 1998. "Demand for Prescription Drugs: The Effects of Managed Care Pharmacy Benefits," HEW 9802002, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:wpa:wuwphe:9802002
    Note: 59 pp; PC-Word .doc
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://econwpa.ub.uni-muenchen.de/econ-wp/hew/papers/9802/9802002.ps.gz
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://econwpa.ub.uni-muenchen.de/econ-wp/hew/papers/9802/9802002.html
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://econwpa.ub.uni-muenchen.de/econ-wp/hew/papers/9802/9802002.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://econwpa.ub.uni-muenchen.de/econ-wp/hew/papers/9802/9802002.doc.gz
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sara Ellison Fisher & Iain Cockburn & Zvi Griliches & Jerry Hausman, 1997. "Characteristics of Demand for Pharmaceutical Products: An Examination of Four Cephalosporins," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 28(3), pages 426-446, Autumn.
    2. Anderson, Simon P & de Palma, Andre, 1992. "Multiproduct Firms: A Nested Logit Approach," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(3), pages 261-276, September.
    3. Judith K. Hellerstein, 1994. "The Demand for Post-Patent Prescription Pharmaceuticals," NBER Working Papers 4981, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Moore, William J & Newman, Robert J, 1993. "Drug Formulary Restrictions as a Cost-Containment Policy in Medicaid Programs," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 36(1), pages 71-97, April.
    5. Dranove, David, 1989. "Medicaid Drug Formulary Restrictions," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 32(1), pages 143-162, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Johanna Vásquez Velásquez & Jos� Vicente Cadavid Herrera & Andr�s Ram�rez Hassan & Karoll G�mez Portilla, 2013. "Elasticidad de la demanda por medicamentos en el mercado farmacéutico privado en Colombia," Revista Ecos de Economía, Universidad EAFIT.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Dana, James D., 2012. "Buyer groups as strategic commitments," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 74(2), pages 470-485.
    2. Arvate, Paulo Roberto & Barbosa, Klênio & Gambardella, Dante, 2013. "Generic-branded drug competition and the price for pharmaceuticals in procurement auctions," Textos para discussão 333, FGV EESP - Escola de Economia de São Paulo, Fundação Getulio Vargas (Brazil).
    3. Sara Fisher Ellison & Christopher M. Snyder, 2010. "Countervailing Power In Wholesale Pharmaceuticals," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 58(1), pages 32-53, March.
    4. Haiden A. Huskamp & Richard G. Frank & Kimberly A. McGuigan & Yuting Zhang, 2005. "The Impact of a Three‐Tier Formulary on Demand Response for Prescription Drugs," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 14(3), pages 729-753, September.
    5. Pereira, Pedro & Ribeiro, Tiago, 2011. "The impact on broadband access to the Internet of the dual ownership of telephone and cable networks," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 29(2), pages 283-293, March.
    6. Tomaso Duso & Annika Herr & Moritz Suppliet, 2014. "The Welfare Impact Of Parallel Imports: A Structural Approach Applied To The German Market For Oral Anti‐Diabetics," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 23(9), pages 1036-1057, September.
    7. Ottaviano, G.I.P. & Thisse, J.-F., 1999. "Monopolistic Competition, Multiproduct Firms and Optimum Product Diversity," Economics Working Papers eco99/31, European University Institute.
    8. Wallace J. Hopp & Xiaowei Xu, 2005. "Product Line Selection and Pricing with Modularity in Design," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 7(3), pages 172-187, August.
    9. Lewis Evans & Neil Quigley & Sayeeda Bano & Nancy Devlin & Alireza Tourani Rad, 1998. "Book reviews," New Zealand Economic Papers, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 32(1), pages 83-103.
    10. Plan, Asaf, 2023. "Symmetry in n-player games," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 207(C).
    11. Lingxiu Dong & Panos Kouvelis & Zhongjun Tian, 2009. "Dynamic Pricing and Inventory Control of Substitute Products," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 11(2), pages 317-339, December.
    12. Ying Kong, 2009. "Competition between brand‐name and generics – analysis on pricing of brand‐name pharmaceutical," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 18(5), pages 591-606, May.
    13. Brekke, Kurt R. & Holmas, Tor Helge & Straume, Odd Rune, 2011. "Reference pricing, competition, and pharmaceutical expenditures: Theory and evidence from a natural experiment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(7), pages 624-638.
    14. Farasat A.S. Bokhari & Franco Mariuzzo & Weijie Yan, 2019. "Antibacterial resistance and the cost of affecting demand: the case of UK antibiotics," Working Paper series, University of East Anglia, Centre for Competition Policy (CCP) 2019-03, Centre for Competition Policy, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK..
    15. Norbert Schulz, 1992. "Special offers and clustering under symmetric monopoly," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 56(3), pages 311-334, October.
    16. Chaim Fershtman & Neil Gandal, 1998. "The Effect of the Arab Boycott on Israel: The Automobile Market," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 29(1), pages 193-214, Spring.
    17. Paraponaris, A. & Verger, P. & Desquins, B. & Villani, P. & Bouvenot, G. & Rochaix, L. & Gourheux, J. C. & Moatti, J. P. AU -, 2004. "Delivering generics without regulatory incentives?: Empirical evidence from French general practitioners about willingness to prescribe international non-proprietary names," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 70(1), pages 23-32, October.
    18. Ivan Moreno-Torres, 2011. "Generic drugs in Spain: price competition vs. moral hazard," Working Papers XREAP2011-04, Xarxa de Referència en Economia Aplicada (XREAP), revised May 2011.
    19. Jing Wu & Judy Xu & Gordon Liu & Jiuhong Wu, 2014. "Pharmaceutical Pricing: An Empirical Study of Market Competition in Chinese Hospitals," PharmacoEconomics, Springer, vol. 32(3), pages 293-303, March.
    20. Timothy Richards, 2007. "A nested logit model of strategic promotion," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 5(1), pages 63-91, March.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • I11 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Analysis of Health Care Markets
    • L65 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Manufacturing - - - Chemicals; Rubber; Drugs; Biotechnology; Plastics

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wpa:wuwphe:9802002. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: EconWPA The email address of this maintainer does not seem to be valid anymore. Please ask EconWPA to update the entry or send us the correct address (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://econwpa.ub.uni-muenchen.de .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.