We examine six molecules facing initial loss of US exclusivity (LOE, from patent expiration or challenges) between June 2009 and May 2013 that were among the 50 most prescribed molecules in May 2013. We examine prices per day of therapy (from the perspective of average revenue received by retail...

The prescription drug component of the Consumer Price Index (CPI measures recent and past drug price changes, and provides the basis for projecting future price trends and health care expenditures. However, there are concerns about the adequacy of the price data because of recent changes in the...

Health care expenditures have been increasing sharply in the last ten years, with spending on mental health disorders being particularly prominent. Over the same time period, a number of new antipsychotic medications have been added to the armamentarium for treatment of persons diagnosed with...

Although broad trends in medical spending in the U.S. over the last decade have received widespread attention from policymakers, very little attention has focused on the components of those changes. For many other industries, economists typically divide nominal expenditures by an official...

Health accounts document changes over time in the level and composition of health spending. There has been a continued evolution in the ability to track such outlays. Less rapid has been the ability to interpret changes in spending. In this paper we apply quality adjusted price indexes for...

We review in considerable detail the conceptual and measurement issues that underlie construction of medical care price indexes in the U.S., particularly the medical care consumer price indexes (MCPIs) and medical-related producer price indexes (MPPIs). We outline salient features of the medical...

Generic drug prices have been the focus of much attention in recent years, with Congressional committees, executive agencies and private organizations all conducting investigations into the pricing patterns for generic drugs. Price spikes for selected old, off-patent drugs have also been widely...

This paper investigates the impact of depression on labor force participation among older workers. Empirically, we use two analytic strategies and rely on a sample drawn from the Health and Retirement Survey. Depression directly and indirectly increases individuals%u2019 probability of retiring...

We construct price indexes for treatment of a specific illness, acute phase major depression, using treatment episodes of care (rather than fixed input bundles) to define quantity. We identify different treatment service bundles that combine varying quantities of prescription drugs, medical...

Using annual IMS data from 1990 to 1996, we examine empirically whether whether elderly-nonelderly price inflation differentials exist for one medical item, namely, prescription pharmaceuticals. We assess prices for Rx for Rx drugs destined for ultimate use by the elderly vs. the nonelderly at...