Factors affecting health services utilization in the medicare population: Would providing prescription drug coverage to medicare recipients affect their use of health care resources?

The most significant predictor for health care utilization is the individual's health status. Other factors shown to affect Medicare recipient's use of health care services are income, education, insurance, age, smoking status, place of residence, and having an ongoing relationship with a physician. Less is known about the demographic and socioeconomic factors that affect prescription drug use. Analogously to medical utilization, health status had been determined to be a significant predictor for prescription drug use. Prescription drug insurance has also been shown to increase pharmacy utilization, but its impact on overall health care costs has yet to be determined.