Pharmalot... Pharmalittle... Good Morning

Interesting counterpoint between Ed's Brilinta article and the Medicare Part D article describing a $304/quarter decrease in non-drug expenses for beneficiaries obtaining Rx drug reimbursement for the first time.

The $304 value is pretty striking because it is only a partial measure of pharmaceutical's impact on hospitalization. Most of these patient presumably took at least some of their prescriptions prior to obtaining drug coverage, especially those whose prescriptions were for generic drugs.

Of course the $10,000 question is how much drug spending was needed to obtain this $304 per quarter savings in non-drug spending. I don't have a subscription to JAMA to see the full article, does someone else have access?

Hi John,

Here is the abstract...

http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/306/4/402.short

The study says this..

"...adjusted total nondrug medical spending before implementation of Part D was consistently but not significantly higher for participants with limited drug coverage than for participants with generous drug coverage... Non-drug spending after Part D implementation for participants with limited prior drug coverage was expected to remain 7.6% higher and reflect changes in spending level and trend that occurred for participants with generous prior drug coverage after January 1, 2006. In contrast to this expected spending trend, nondrug medical spending after Part D implementation was observed to be 3.9% lower for participants with limited prior drug coverage than for those with generous prior drug coverage, constituting a significant differential reduction."

Hope this helps, ed

Ed:

You (and I) forgot what day this is - "World Hepatitus Day" - celebrated today, for the first time, on the birthday of Professor Baruch Blumberg who won the Nobel Prize for discovering the hepatitis B surface antigen.

http://www.worldhepatitisalliance.org/WorldHepatitisDay.aspx

Don't forget the Nobel Prize awarded to a member of my industry, Dr. George Hitchings of Wellcome Research laboratories, for his pioneering work along with Dr. Gertrude Elion in discovery of antiviral drug treatments.