Document Information
Pharmacy Use and Costs in Employer-Provided Health Plans
Insights for TRICARE Benefit Design from the Private Sector
The military health system, as well as the private health care sector, has experienced rapid growth in pharmaceutical expenditures. In 2002 alone, the Department of Defense spent about $3 billion on outpatient pharmacy benefits. As part of an effort to redesign the TRICARE pharmacy benefit to save costs, the Department of Defense is considering moving from a two-tiered to a three-tiered co-payment system, which will increase the co-payment for some classes and brands of drugs. Providers (acting in the interest of their patients) would, theoretically, have an incentive to prescribe less-costly options. To predict how changing to a three-tiered system will affect costs and pharmacy utilization, the authors use an existing data resource to determine how beneficiaries age 45 to 64 in private-sector health plans responded to similar changes in pharmacy benefits. In this analysis, the authors assess, among other potential outcomes, how changing to a three-tiered system would affect aggregate costs and pharmacy utilization and how it would affect the utilization of specific (high-cost) classes of medications.
See Also:
Support RAND Research — Buy This Product!
Paperback Cover Price: $20.00
Discounted Web Price: $18.00
Pages: 104
ISBN/EAN: 0-8330-3549-5
Free, downloadable PDF file(s) are available below.
RAND makes an electronic version of this document available for free as a public service. If you find this information valuable, please consider purchasing a paper copy of the full document to help support RAND research.
Use Adobe Acrobat Reader version 7.0 or higher for the best experience.
Contents
Chapter One:
Introduction
Chapter Two:
Background
Chapter Three:
Data Sources and Methods
Chapter Four:
Analysis Results
Chapter Five:
Conclusions and Policy Implications
Appendix:
- Relationship Between Pharmacy Costs and Age
- Results of Multivariate Regressions: Aggregate Analyses
- Results of Multivariate Regressions: Classs-Level Analyses
The research described in this report was sponsored by the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD). The research was conducted jointly by the Center for Military Health Policy Research, a RAND Health program, and the Forces and Resources Policy Center, a RAND National Defense Research Institute (NDRI) program. NDRI is a federally funded research and development center supported by the OSD, the Joint Staff, the unified commands, and the defense agencies.
This product is part of the RAND Corporation monograph series. RAND monographs present major research findings that address the challenges facing the public and private sectors. All RAND monographs undergo rigorous peer review to ensure high standards for research quality and objectivity.
Permission is given to duplicate this electronic document for personal use only, as long as it is unaltered and complete. Copies may not be duplicated for commercial purposes. Unauthorized posting of RAND PDFs to a non-RAND Web site is prohibited. RAND PDFs are protected under copyright law. For information on reprint and linking permissions, please visit the RAND Permissions page.
The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit research organization providing objective analysis and effective solutions that address the challenges facing the public and private sectors around the world. RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors.
* RAND research is conducted across divisions, centers, and projects; these organizational components are represented in the "Related RAND Divisions" section above.
Top
RAND® is a registered trademark. Copyright © 1994-2008 RAND Corporation. 