The Impact of the Medicare Drug Benefit on Health Care Spending by Older Households

Dean Baker and Ben Zipperer
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Mark Weisbrot

CEPR Reports and Issue Briefs from Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR)

Abstract: This report uses data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Expenditure Survey from 2004 to 2006 as well as data from the Congressional Budget Office to analyze the savings in prescription drug spending for seniors as a result of the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003 (MMA). The results show that the 1st income quintile of seniors experienced a fall in the rate of expenditures for prescription drugs and the 2nd income quintile saw a slowing of the rate of increase in expenditures. However, senior households in the middle- and upper-income quintiles saw a rise in expenditures for prescription drugs.

Keywords: medicare; prescription drugs; MMA; senior citizens; health care (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I11 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 6 pages
Date: 2008-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-geo, nep-mac and nep-ure
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:epo:papers:2008-33

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