The impact of reference pricing of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory agents on the use and costs of analgesic drugs.(Insurance, Prescription Coverage and Pricing)

Faced with growing drug expenditures, drug insurance plan executives have adopted various cost containment measures. One such policy, reference pricing (RP), limits drug plan reimbursement of interchangeable medicines to a reference price, which is typically equal to the price of the lowest cost interchangeable drug; any cost above that is borne by the patient. RP policies vary in the extent to which drugs are considered interchangeable by a particular plan (Lopez-Casasnovas and Puig-Junoy 2000). Under its most restrictive form--Type 1 RP--only chemically equivalent drugs (i.e.,…