New State Data on Medicaid Drug Use and Cost Can Help States Solve Problems.

New data on Medicaid prescription drug use and reimbursement in 1999, prepared by Mathematica for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, provide a tool states can use to identify potential problems in their Medicaid prescription drug programs and explore solutions. The data are organized into uniformly formatted tables for each state and the nation as a whole to facilitate comparisons. States can use these tables to reveal areas in which they are outliers, compared with other states and the national average, and explore potential explanations. Their own more recent state Medicaid prescription drug data can help them assess in-state trends since 1999.