Medical News: Plavix Ads Increase Medicaid Costs but Not Usage - in Cardiovascular, Coronary Artery Disease from MedPage Today

By John Gever, Senior Editor, MedPage Today

Medicaid expenditures for clopidogrel (Plavix) soared after direct-to-consumer TV ads for the drug began airing, though not because of any change in prescription trends, researchers said.

Clopidogrel usage by Medicaid recipients stayed on the same upward track as before the ads started, but the drug's unit cost jumped 11.8% (P<0.001) when national TV network advertising starting airing in late 2001, reported Michael R. Law, PhD, of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, B.C., and colleagues.

The net effect was that Medicaid's per-enrollee expense curve for clopidogrel bent upward at that point, the researchers wrote in the Nov. 23 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine.

From 2002 through 2005, Medicaid spending for clopidogrel accelerated by $40.58 per 1,000 enrollees per quarter (95% CI $22.61 to $58.56), above what would have been expected from the prior trend, Law and colleagues found.

"If drug price increases after direct-to-consumer advertising initiation are common, there are important implications for payers and for policy makers in the U.S. and elsewhere," they wrote.
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