How do prescription drugs affect the use of other health services?
- Collection:
- Health Policy and Services Research
- Series Title(s):
- Issue in brief (Center for Retirement Research)
- Author(s):
- Wettstein, Gal, author
- Contributor(s):
- Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, issuing body.
- Publication:
- Chestnut Hill, MA : Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, February 2018
- Language(s):
- English
- Format:
- Text
- Subject(s):
- Facilities and Services Utilization Medicare Part D Prescription Drugs Aged Health Expenditures Middle Aged Humans United States
- Genre(s):
- Technical Report
- Abstract:
- Over the past decade, the availability of prescription drugs has increased, particularly for the elderly. Medicare Part D expanded coverage to include prescription drugs, and the Affordable Care Act (ACA) enhanced Part D's coverage. While lowering the cost of prescription drugs would obviously encourage more use of medications, the implications of such changes for the rest of the health care market are less clear. The answer depends on whether drugs are "substitutes" for other care or "complements." Drugs could be substitutes if they prevent deterioration in health conditions that would otherwise require more intensive care, such as surgery. However, in many ways, drugs may be complements to other care, adding value to other tools in the clinician's toolbox. To explore this issue, this brief examines the use of health services before and after the introduction of Part D. The discussion proceeds as follows. The first section provides background on Part D and summarizes previous research on how it affects the use of other health services. The second section explains the data and methodology used in this study. The third section shows the main results. The final section concludes that broadening the availability of drugs increases the use of office-based health care, with a possible decline in the use of inpatient facilities.
- Copyright:
- Reproduced with permission of the copyright holder. Further use of the material is subject to CC BY license. (More information)
- Extent:
- 1 online resource (1 PDF file (8 pages))
- Illustrations:
- Illustrations
- NLM Unique ID:
- 101751804 (See catalog record)
- Permanent Link:
- http://resource.nlm.nih.gov/101751804