2019年11月1日
Can income-based co-payment rates improve disparity? The case of the choice between brand-name and generic drugs.
BMC health services research
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- 巻
- 19
- 号
- 1
- 開始ページ
- 780
- 終了ページ
- 780
- 記述言語
- 英語
- 掲載種別
- 研究論文(学術雑誌)
- DOI
- 10.1186/s12913-019-4598-8
BACKGROUND: Higher income population tend to prefer brand-name to generic drugs, which may cause disparity in access to brand-name drugs among income groups. A potential policy that can resolve such disparity is imposing a greater co-payment rate on high-income enrollees. However, the effects of such policy are unknown. We examined how patients' choice between brand-name and generic drugs are affected by the unique income-based co-payment rates in Japan; 10% for general enrollees and 30% for those with high income among the elderly aged 75 and over. METHODS: We drew on cross-sectional price variation among commonly prescribed 311 drugs using health insurance claims data from a large prefecture in Japan between October 2013 and September 2014 to identify between-income-group differences in responses to differentiated payments. RESULTS: Running 311 multivariate logistic regression models controlling individual demographics, the median estimate indicated that high-income group was 3% (odds ratio = 0.97) less likely to choose a generic drug than the general-income group and the interquartile estimates ranged 0.92-1.02. The multivariate feasible generalized least squares model indicated high-income group's higher likelihood to choose brand-name drugs than the general-income group without co-payment rate differentiation (p < 0.001). Such gap in the likelihood was attenuated by 0.4% (p = 0.027) with an US$1 increase in the difference in additional payment/month for brand-name drugs between income groups - no gap with US$10 additional payment/month. This attenuation was observed in drugs for chronic diseases only, not for acute diseases. CONCLUSIONS: Income-based co-payment rates appeared to reduce disparity in access to brand-name drugs across income groups, in addition to reducing total medical expenditure among high-income group who shifted from brand-name drugs to generic ones due to larger drug price differences.
- リンク情報
- ID情報
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- DOI : 10.1186/s12913-019-4598-8
- PubMed ID : 31675967
- PubMed Central 記事ID : PMC6824135