Effects of clinical and socioeconomic factors on Medicare and patient costs for colorectal cancer in Australia: a retrospective multivariate regression analysis.

Objective: We study how clinical and socioeconomic factors influence colorectal cancer (CRC) costs for patients and Medicare in Australia. The study seeks to extend the limited Australian literature on CRC costs by analysing comprehensive patient-level medical services and pharmaceutical cost data.

Design, Setting And Participants: Using the Victorian Cancer Registry, we identified all patients in Victoria who were diagnosed with CRC from 2010 to 2019 and extracted their linked 2010-2021 Medicare data.

Elderly responses to private health insurance incentives: Evidence from Australia.

Many governments with dual public and private health systems offer subsidies for private health insurance (PHI) with the aim to ease the burden on the public system. Understanding how elderly individuals respond to these PHI subsidies is important because they typically have greater health care needs but often struggle with the affordability of PHI. However, prior studies provide little guidance on this issue because they have mainly focused on the responses to PHI incentives among the general population.

Effects of Medicare Part D coverage gap closure on utilization of branded and generic drugs.

The Affordable Care Act included a provision to gradually eliminate the Medicare prescription drug coverage gap between 2011 and 2020, which substantially lower medication costs in the gap. Using 2007-2016 Medicare claims data, we estimate how filling the gap affects individuals' out-of-pocket spending and medication use, separately for branded and generic drugs. One important difficulty in estimating the policy impact is that around the same time, many blockbuster drugs commonly used by the Medicare population experienced patent expiration and began to see generic entry.

Differential Effects by Mental Health Status of Filling the Medicare Part D Coverage Gap.

Objective: The objective of this study was to study how changes in insurance benefit design affect medication use of older adults with mental disorders.

Data Sources: US Medicare claims data from 2007 to 2018.

Study Design: Exploiting the gradual elimination of the Medicare prescription drug coverage gap beginning in 2011, we examine the effects on medication use and out-of-pocket spending by drug type with a difference-in-differences approach.