The 2003 Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act (MMA) created Medicare Part D, a voluntary prescription drug benefit program. The benefit is a government subsidized prescription drug benefit within Medicare. This article focuses on the development of the prescription drug risk-adjustment model used to adjust payments to reflect the health status of plan enrollees.

OBJECTIVE To examine differences in male and female veterans of Operations Enduring Freedom/Iraqi Freedom (OEF/OIF) period of service in taking prescription headache medication, and associations between taking prescription headache medication and mental health status, psychiatric symptoms, and rates of traumatic events. BACKGROUND Headaches are common among active service members and are asso...

BACKGROUND Respiratory tract infections are the most common reason for antibiotic prescription in Sweden as in other countries. The prescription rates vary markedly in different countries, counties and municipalities. The reasons for these variations in prescription rate are not obvious. AIM To find possible explanations for different antibiotic prescription rates in children. DESIGN OF STU...

In recent years, prescription drug expenditures in the United States have increased rapidly. In 2003, spending on prescription medications totaled $179.2 billion dollars, or approximately 11% of national health expenditures [Smith, C., Cowan, C., Sensenig, A., Catlin, A., the Health Accounts Team. (2005). Health spending growth slows in 2003. Health Affairs, 24 (1) 185-194]. In response to rapi...

A lthough guidelines suggest physicians should not treat themselves, the self-prescription of medications is common. Self-prescription among physicians in training is of particular concern, given their limited clinical experience and high levels of work stress. In the only large multicenter study conducted to date, to our knowledge,Christie et al found that self-prescribing iswidespread, with 5...