TY - BOOK ID - 137381017 TI - Pharmacy use and costs in employer-provided health plans : insights for TRICARE benefit design from the private sector AU - Joyce, Geoffrey. AU - Malkin, Jesse D. AU - Pace, Jennifer. AU - United States. AU - National Defense Research Institute (U.S.) AU - RAND Health. PY - 2004 PB - Santa Monica, CA : RAND Corporation, DB - UniCat KW - Pharmacy, Military KW - Pharmaceutical services insurance KW - Veterans KW - Retired military personnel KW - Military dependents KW - Drugs KW - Medical care KW - Prices KW - United States KW - Armed Forces KW - Medical care. UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:137381017 AB - The military health system, as well as the private health care sector, has experienced rapid growth in pharmaceutical expenditures. In 2002 alone, the Department of Defense spent about $3 billion on outpatient pharmacy benefits. As part of an effort to redesign the TRICARE pharmacy benefit to save costs, the Department of Defense is considering moving from a two-tiered to a three-tiered co-payment system, which will increase the co-payment for some classes and brands of drugs. Providers (acting in the interest of their patients) would, theoretically, have an incentive to prescribe less-costly options. To predict how changing to a three-tiered system will affect costs and pharmacy utilization, the authors use an existing data resource to determine how beneficiaries age 45 to 64 in private-sector health plans responded to similar changes in pharmacy benefits. In this analysis, the authors assess, among other potential outcomes, how changing to a three-tiered system would affect aggregate costs and pharmacy utilization and how it would affect the utilization of specific (high-cost) classes of medications. ER -