Private Insurance and Prescription Outcomes for Children

描述(由申请人提供)：很少有人关注私人保险儿童的保险障碍，尽管很大一部分美国儿童是由私人保险覆盖的。特别是在私人保险日益恶化的时代，调查私人保险的慢性病儿童是否有接受治疗的风险变得非常重要。 我们的研究旨在使用一个独特的纵向数据集来填补这一空白，该数据集包含了大量私人保险儿童及其家庭的信息。在这个项目中，我们将通过研究处方药覆盖范围对慢性病儿童结局的影响，在调查父母如何应对私人保险费用分担的问题上迈出第一步。 这项拟议研究的主要具体目标是确定处方药费用分摊的变化如何影响私人保险的慢性病儿童对各种慢性病的处方药治疗的坚持。作为第二个目标，我们建议确定处方药费用分担对慢性病儿童住院和门诊支出的影响。 在这两个目标中，我们将控制其他健康计划特征、儿童自身特征、合并疾病、一般家庭特征以及其他家庭成员的自付负担。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Little attention has focused on barriers to coverage among the privately insured children, although, a large portion of the American children are covered under private insurance. Especially in an era of deteriorating private coverage, it has become very important to investigate whether privately insured chronically ill children are at risk for treatment. Our study aims to fill this gap using a unique longitudinal dataset that contains information on a large group of privately insured children and their families. In this project, we will take a first step in investigating how parents respond to private insurance cost sharing regarding health services use of their children by studying the impact of prescription drug coverage on outcomes by the chronically ill children. The primary specific aim of the proposed research is to determine how changes in prescription drug cost sharing affect adherence to prescription drug therapy for various chronic conditions among the privately insured chronically ill children. As a secondary aim, we propose to identify the effect of prescription drug cost sharing on inpatient and outpatient spending among the chronically ill children. In both aims, we will control for other health plan characteristics, child's own characteristics, co-morbid conditions, general family characteristics, and the out-of-pocket burden of other family members.