Empirical Study On Impact Factors Of Drug Expenditure Among Insuranced Patients

The expanding of drug expenditure which is widely discussed in the world has become one of the great challenges. Controlling the expense of drug effectively can help to decrease the total medical expenditure, to utilize the distribution of limited health resource to provide more qualified healthcare service to the public, to enhance the equity and accessibility of medical service and drug usage, as well to alleviate the burden of government, enterprise and individual patients. Additionally, the theoretic research and empirical study show that the drug price is only one of the factors which results in the growth of drug expenditure. It is not enough to dominate the surging drug expenditure only by cutting the price.Firstly, the implementation and effect of drug cost containment was analyzed based on the combination of the inherence characteristics of pharmaceutical market. The results show that price change is currently the main evaluating indicator of adjective effect on drug cost. However, lots of problems are exposing in succession with the decreasing price trend, including the shortage of cheap drugs, the big difference among the same active ingredients, and the continuing rising expenditure. Therefore, it is necessary to analyze the drug cost to figure out its key affective factors and the inherent cause behind it, then further to explore the breakthrough to control it.Secondly, empirical study was used to evaluate the factors affecting the drug cost by three-factor and six-factor index analysis. The result of the three-factor index analysis shows that the drug cost grows 9% in which the mixed effect and the volume effect increase by 48% and 10% respectively, while the drug price decreases by 33%. As to formulation, both prices of injection and oral drugs drop obviously while the mixed effect still go up (oral 71%, injection 35%), but these two formulations show the opposite trends in volume change. Furthermore, the result of the six-factor index analysis shows that the utilization of the generic drug promotes a minor growth of drug cost different from the previous qualitative results. There are two main reasons that arouse these effects: on one hand, the existence of the compensation system of subsidizing hospitals by charging more medicine fees leads to the higher absolute profits of the expensive drugs; on the other hand, the higher commission leads to the doctors to prescribe the expensive drugs. And the problems of drug abuse and moral hazard of the medical insurance become more prominent, which further induces the increasing trend of the drug dose.Finally, based on the outcomes of empirical methods, we suggest that it is necessary to build up the system of drug costs containment denominated by providers. Furthermore, this research emphasizes particularly on establishment of prepayment impress system which is proved to be one of the most effective approach drug contaminant. As administrative authority, the government should pay great attention to the establishment of healthy and long term economic incentive plans.