Take-Up of Medicare Part D: Results from the Health and Retirement Study

Helen Levy and David Weir

No 14692, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We analyze data from the Health and Retirement Study on senior citizens' take-up of Medicare Part D. Take-up among those without drug coverage in 2004 was high; about fifty to sixty percent of this group have Part D coverage in 2006. Only seven percent of senior citizens lack drug coverage in 2006 compared with 24 percent in 2004. We find little circumstantial evidence that Part D crowded out private coverage in the short run, since the persistence of employer coverage was only slightly lower in 2004 -- 2006 than it was in 2002 -- 2004. We find that demand for prescription drugs is the most important determinant of the decision to enroll in Part D among those with no prior coverage. Many of those who remained without coverage in 2006 reported that they do not use prescribed medicines, and the majority had relatively low out-of-pocket spending. Thus, for the most part, Medicare beneficiaries seem to have been able to make economically rational decisions about Part D enrollment despite the complexity of the program. We also find that Part D erased socioeconomic gradients in drug coverage among the elderly.

JEL-codes: I18 I38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea, nep-ias and nep-lab
Note: EH PE
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Published as H. Levy & D. R. Weir, 2010. "Take-up of Medicare Part D: Results From the Health and Retirement Study," The Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, vol 65B(4), pages 492-501.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w14692.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Take-up of Medicare Part D: Results From the Health and Retirement Study (2010)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:14692

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w14692

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().