MCBS Highlights: Five Most Commonly Used Types of Pharmaceuticals

The Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey (MCBS) is a powerful tool for analyzing the Medicare population. Based on a stratified random sample, we can derive information about the health care use, expenditure, and financing of Medicare’s 36 million enrollees. We can also learn about those enrollees’ health status, living arrangements, and access to and satisfaction with health care. Figures 1-4 show the five most frequently mentioned types of prescription drugs among all community-based Medicare beneficiaries in total and by several breakdowns, based on data from the 1995 MCBS cost and use file.