Thursday, July 2, 2009

A study of a prescription drug plan in Pennsylvania finds that many seniors benefiting from Medicare's new drug program are ending up with lower hospital costs.

People who had little or no drug coverage before the program kicked in 2006 are now getting the drugs they need and are having fewer doctor visits and hospital stays.

Oddly, though, for people who already had adequate coverage, there's been a rise in both prescriptions filled and other medical services. Harvard health policy professor Joseph Newhouse says that could be because people with better plans were more likely to be "overprescribed" and getting services they really didn't need.

Newhouse is the senior author of the study which looked at the records of about 35,000 seniors enrolled in Pennsylvania's Medicare Advantage plan.
One doctor not involved in the study says it's not surprising people use more drugs when somebody else is paying for them.

Results are published in the New England Journal of Medicine.