Medicare Drugs

Medicare prescription drugs: making the new program work.

Prescription Drugs and the Elderly: Policy Implications of Medicare Coverage

Since outpatient prescription drug use is not covered by Medicare, it is a major source of out-of-pocket expenditures for the elderly. By one estimate, severely disabled elderly persons spend more than half their out-of-pocket health expenditures on outpatient prescription drugs. What makes this financial burden all the more daunting is that half the elderly population has no insurance coverage...

Hospital outpatient pharmacies win higher medicare payments for 2011: but they are not yet recovering overhead costs for expensive drugs.

drugs. In 2011, that CMS “Robin Hood” move resulted in an additional $200 million being tossed into the separately payable-drug reimbursement pool. As a result, the average reimbursement went from a rate of ASP minus 1% (which is what the CMS formula would have dictated) to the ASP plus 5%. That is 1% higher than the 2010 amount. Although hospitals are appreciative of the increase, they point o...

Matching MCBS and Medicare Data: The Best of Both Worlds

Survey reports from the Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey (MCBS) were matched to Medicare administrative files to create the 1992 MCBS Cost and Use file. This file improves on previous MCBS Access-to-Care user files by representing the entire (ever enrolled) Medicare population and including services not covered by Medicare such as outpatient prescription drugs and long-term facility care. Th...

Did Medicare Induce Pharmaceutical Innovation?

The introduction of Medicare in 1965 was the single largest change in health insurance coverage in U.S. history. Providing nearly universal public health insurance coverage for the elderly, it is currently one of the largest health insurance programs in the world. Its introduction had dramatic effects on health insurance coverage and health care utilization for the elderly (Benjamin Cook et al....

Supplemental insurance and use of effective cardiovascular drugs among elderly medicare beneficiaries with coronary heart disease.

CONTEXT Cost-sharing in US prescription drug coverage plans for elderly persons varies widely. Evaluation of prescription drug use among elderly persons by type of health insurance could provide useful information for designing a Medicare drug program. OBJECTIVE To determine use of effective cardiovascular drugs among elderly persons with coronary heart disease (CHD) by type of health insuran...