Prices, Pharmaceuticals and Prevention
In this session, we have three empirical papers looking at people’s response to various features of health insurance plans. The first and the third paper are focused on prescription drug insurance coverage. In the first paper, the author investigates how insurance plans’ cost-sharing arrangement together with new information about drugs changes consumers’ drug utilization, using MarketScan Data linked with data on drug news. The third paper evaluates medication consumption of branded oral anti-diabetic in Medicare Part D during the coverage year, taking into account generic prescribing increases that could affect consumption decisions. Using IMS Health Longitudinal Database, the paper suggests that beneficiaries facing Part D’s non-linear benefit design are neither fully forward-looking nor fully myopic. Finally, the second paper analyzes how the ACA’s expansion of coverage of preventive care changed the pattern of use of preventive services in the US. Using the 2007-2011 MarketScan Commercial Claims and Encounter Data, the authors show modest increases in rates of preventive services overall, with differences by plan type, service, and patient age.