PDB7: DIABETES RELATED DRUG UTILIZATION AND EXPENDITURES IN MEDICARE BENEFICIARIES WITH AND WITHOUT SUPPLEMENTAL PRESCRIPTION DRUG INSURANCE

Predictability of Prescription Drug Expenditures for Medicare Beneficiaries

MCBS data are used to analyze the predictability of drug expenditures by Medicare beneficiaries. Predictors include demographic characteristics and measures of health status, the majority derived using CMS' diagnosis cost group/hierarchical condition category (DCG/HCC) risk-adjustment methodology. In prospective models, demographic variables explained 5 percent of the variation in drug expendit...

Prescription drug coverage, utilization, and spending among Medicare beneficiaries.

Outpatient prescription drugs are not a covered benefit under Medicare. There have been proposals in the past to expand Medicare benefits to include drug coverage, and current discussions dealing with "modernizing" the Medicare benefit package have raised the issue again. Using data from the 1995 Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey (MCBS), we describe the sources and extent of drug coverage amo...

Medical cost offsets from prescription drug utilization among Medicare beneficiaries.

This brief commentary extends earlier work on the value of adherence to derive medical cost offset estimates from prescription drug utilization. Among seniors with chronic vascular disease, 1% increases in condition-specific medication use were associated with significant (P  less than  0.001) reductions in gross nonpharmacy medical costs in the amounts of 0.63% for dyslipidemia, 0.77% for cong...

Patterns of prescription drug expenditures and medication adherence among medicare part D beneficiaries with and without the low-income supplement

BACKGROUND The association between the Medicare Part D low-income subsidy (LIS), gap coverage, and outcomes such as medical expenditures, prescription fills, and medication adherence is not well understood. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between the LIS and these measures for patients within a large, national Part D plan in the United States. METHODS In this cross-s...

Providing Prescription Drug Coverage for Medicare Beneficiaries