Research Brief
Prescription Drugs and the Elderly: Policy Implications of Medicare Coverage
Dec 31, 1998
The Financial Burden of Prescription Drug Use Among Elderly Persons
Published In: The Gerontologist, v. 37, no. 4, Aug. 1997, p. 475-482
Posted on RAND.org on July 31, 1997
Read More
Access further information on this document at gerontologist.gerontologyjournals.orgThis article was published outside of RAND. The full text of the article can be found at the link above.
Expenditures for prescription drugs are not covered by Medicare and are thus a potential source of large out-of-pocket expenditures for elderly persons. This study, using a new data source, the 1990 Elderly Health Supplement to the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), demonstrates that, among elderly persons, insurance coverage for drugs reduces the fraction of household income spent on prescription drugs by 50 percent. Groups most likely to benefit from insurance coverage are elderly women and those with common chronic conditions, low incomes, and rural residences.
Access further information on this document at gerontologist.gerontologyjournals.org
This article was published outside of RAND. The full text of the article can be found at the link above.
Related Products
This report is part of the RAND Corporation external publication series. Many RAND studies are published in peer-reviewed scholarly journals, as chapters in commercial books, or as documents published by other organizations.
The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis. RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors.