论文标题
影响力的成本：向医生的礼物如何塑造处方和药物成本
The Cost of Influence: How Gifts to Physicians Shape Prescriptions and Drug Costs
论文作者
论文摘要
本文研究了从制药公司到美国医生的礼物或实物付款的礼物（金钱或实物支付）如何影响处方和药品成本。我们通过将医师级别的数据与因果推理和机器学习方法结合在一起，估计异质治疗效果。我们发现，付款会导致医生开出更多的品牌药物，从而导致每美元收到30美元的费用增加。在医师之间的反应差异很大，主要是由患者自付费用的差异来解释。据估计，礼物禁令将药物成本降低3-4％。综上所述，这些新颖的发现揭示了付款如何塑造处方选择并提高成本。
This paper studies how gifts - monetary or in-kind payments - from drug firms to physicians in the US affect prescriptions and drug costs. We estimate heterogeneous treatment effects by combining physician-level data on antidiabetic prescriptions and payments with causal inference and machine learning methods. We find that payments cause physicians to prescribe more brand drugs, resulting in a cost increase of $30 per dollar received. Responses differ widely across physicians, and are primarily explained by variation in patients' out-of-pocket costs. A gift ban is estimated to decrease drug costs by 3-4%. Taken together, these novel findings reveal how payments shape prescription choices and drive up costs.
