Dear All,
I am pleased to invite you to another Empirical Seminar of the Institute of Economic Research of Slovak Academy of Sciences, this time in the field of health economics. The invitation has been accepted by Jakub Červený (Institute for Health Care Analyses, Ministry of Health of the Slovak Republic & Institute of Economic Research, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Slovakia), who will present his research analysing the effects of the increase in out-of-pocket costs on the drug prescription in Slovakia by even study analysis.
Date: September 11, 2023 (Monday), 1.00 p.m.
See abstract below. The workshop will be organized in a hybrid form - for those interested, the speaker and a couple of discussants will be present in the library of our Institute.
If you know of anyone who might be interested in this topic, please forward this information on.
I look forward to the discussion.
Mária Širaňová
AUTHORS: Jakub Červený (speaker) – Boriana Miloucheva
TITLE: Drug Copayments, Child Outcomes, and Intra-family Spillovers
ABSTRACT: Reducing out-of-pocket costs of medication has been shown to lead to higher use initiation rates in childhood. Less is known, however, about the potentially asymmetric effects of increases in such costs, resulting from a loss in insurance coverage. This paper looks at the expiration of prescription drug copay waivers for children in Slovakia to investigate changes in pharmaceutical use resulting from increasing out-of-pocket costs. Leveraging age thresholds for copay waivers, this paper uses event study analyses to show that increases in out-of-pocket costs reduce prescription drug use, as well as average spending. Using a dataset capturing the universe of prescriptions filled between 2016–2018, we are further able to understand these effects among both chronic and non-chronic users. We trace the effects of these changes in prescription drug use to down-stream health consequences for children, as measured by GP visits and hospitalizations. Linking these data to social security records, we are further able to understand spillovers onto parental health and employment.