This paper examines how physicians respond to …nancial incentives when there are con‡icts of interest using a quasi-experimental approach in a unique setting— the health services market in China. In recent years, drug expenditures in China have accounted for nearly 50% of total health expenditures, which is much higher than the world average. Hospitals own pharmacies and generate revenue from d...

BACKGROUND: While increases in prescription drug spending have moderated in recent years, drug spending is still a concern among managed care organizations and health plan administrators. In order to minimize cost increases from year to year, many health care plans have shifted more of the cost of medications to the member-consumer. Coinsurance, a benefit design in which the patient pays a perc...

This Issue Brief closely examines expenditures on prescription drugs, and discusses their potential to substitute for other types of health care services. In addition, it describes employer coverage of prescription drugs, direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs, and potential legislation affecting the prescription drug market. Prescription drug expenditures grew at double-digit rat...

BACKGROUND A global budgeting system helps control the growth of healthcare spending by setting expenditure ceilings. However, the hospital global budget implemented in Taiwan in 2002 included a special provision: drug expenditures are reimbursed at face value, while other expenditures are subject to discounting. That gives hospitals, particularly those that are for-profit, an incentive to incr...

In recent years, prescription drug expenditures in the United States have increased rapidly. In 2003, spending on prescription medications totaled $179.2 billion dollars, or approximately 11% of national health expenditures [Smith, C., Cowan, C., Sensenig, A., Catlin, A., the Health Accounts Team. (2005). Health spending growth slows in 2003. Health Affairs, 24 (1) 185-194]. In response to rapi...

• Context The healthy ageing assumptions may lead to substantial changes in paths of aggregate healthcare expenditures, notably catastrophic expenditures of people at the end of the life. But clear assessments of involved amounts are not available when we specifically consider ambulatory care (as drug expenditures) generally offered to chronically-ill people who can remain in this health-status...

Background and Objectives: Pharmaceutical expenditures are responsible for a major part of health systems’ cost. According to the WHO’s statistics, Iran is the first among the 20 countries in the world in terms of drug consumption. The first step in controlling consumption of a particular good is to identify factor inducing the relevant demands. Hence, this study aimed to identify the pattern a...

PURPOSE Rapid growth of prescription drug expenditures is a problem in South Korea. The objective of this study was to assess the contributions of four variables (therapeutic choice, drug-mix, original use, and price changes) to increases in drug expenditures paid by the National Health Insurance (NHI) in Korea. MATERIALS AND METHODS A retrospective cohort study was conducted between January ...

BACKGROUND Medicare Part D was expected to have differential impacts on patient drug expenditures and use based on beneficiaries' levels of pre-Part D patient drug spending, but it is unknown whether these projections have borne out. OBJECTIVES We sought to evaluate whether and how the policy effect of Medicare Part D on drug expenditures and use was modified by levels of pre-Part D drug spen...

PURPOSE This chapter examines how drug prescribing behavior in Taiwanese hospitals changed after the government changed reimbursement systems. In 2002, Taiwan instituted a system in which hospitals are reimbursed for drug expenditures at full price from a fixed global budget before the remaining budget is allocated to reimburse all other expenditures, often at discounted prices. Providers are t...