Benefit Plan Design and Prescription Drug Utilization Among Asthmatics: Do Patient Copayments Matter?

   (888 K)

Objective: The ratio of controller to reliever medication use has been proposed as a measure of treatment quality for asthma patients. In this study we examine the effects of plan level mean out-of-pocket asthma medication patient copayments and other features of benefit plan design on the use of controller medications alone, controller and reliever medications (combination therapy), and reliever medications alone. Methods: 1995-2000 MarketScan claims data were used to construct plan-level out-of-pocket copayment and physician/practice prescriber preference variables for asthma medications. Separate multinomial logit models were estimated for patients in fee-for-service (FFS) and non-FFS plans relating benefit plan design features, physician/practice prescribing preferences, patient demographics, patient comorbidities and county-level income variables to patient-level asthma treatment patterns. Results: We find that the controller reliever ratio rose steadily over 1995-2000, along with out-of-pocket payments for asthma medications, which rose more for controllers than for relievers. However, after controlling for other variables, plan level mean out-of-pocket copayments were not found to have a statistically significant influence upon patient-level asthma treatment patterns. On the other hand, physician practice prescribing patterns strongly influenced patient level treatment patterns. Conclusions: There is no strong statistical evidence that higher levels of out-of-pocket copayments for prescription drugs influence asthma treatment patterns. However, physician/practice prescribing preferences influence patient treatment.

Published:

• Cutler, David M. and Alan M. Garber (eds.) Frontiers in Health Policy, Vol. 7. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press for the NBER, 2004. ,
• William H. Crown & Ernst R. Berndt & Onur Baser & Stan N. Finkelstein & Whitney P. Witt & Jonathan Maguire & Kenan E. Haver, 2004. "Benefit Plan Design and Prescription Drug Utilization Among Asthmatics: Do Patient Copayments Matter?," Forum for Health Economics & Policy, Berkeley Electronic Press, vol. 7. ,
• Benefit Plan Design and Prescription Drug Utilization Among Asthmatics: Do Patient Copayments Matter?, William H. Crown, Ernst R. Berndt, Onur Baser, Stan N. Finkelstein, Whitney P. Witt, Jonathan Maguire, Kenan E. Haver, in Frontiers in Health Policy Research, Volume 7 (2004), MIT Press
  

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