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Purpose – This chapter offers an integrative review of psychological and neurobiological differences between younger and older adults that might impact economic behavior. Focusing on key health economic challenges facing the elderly, it offers perspectives on how these psychological and neurobiological factors may influence decision-making over the life course and considers future interdisciplinary research directions.

Methodology/approach – We review relevant literature from three domains that are essential for developing a comprehensive science of decision-making and economic behavior in aging (psychology, neuroscience, and economics), consider implications for prescription drug coverage and long-term care (LTC) insurance, and highlight future research directions.

Findings – Older adults face many complex economic decisions that directly affect their health and well-being, including LTC insurance, prescription drug plans, and end of life care. Economic research suggests that many older Americans are not making cost-effective and economically rational decisions. While economic models provide insight into some of the financial incentives associated with these decisions, they typically do not consider the roles of cognition and affect in decision-making. Research has established that older age is associated with predictable declines in many cognitive functions and evidence is accumulating that distinct social motives and affect-processing profiles emerge in older age. It is unknown how these age differences impact the economic behaviors of older people and implies opportunities for path-breaking interdisciplinary research.

Originality/value of the chapter – Our chapter looks to develop interdisciplinary research to better understand the causes and consequences of age-related changes in economic decision-making and guide interventions to improve public programs and overall social welfare.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effectiveness (through the analytic prism of “corporate citizenship”) of the US pharmaceutical industry's political strategy behind the Partnership for Prescription Assistance, the program that the industry has recently initiated to address the prescription drug needs of senior and other low‐income American citizens.

By reviewing data collected by PhRMA, the industry's association, over a one‐year period, the Partnership for Prescription Assistance program is evaluated for: performance (over periods of one month, three months, six months and one year); congruence with the concept of corporate citizenship; and effectiveness as an industry political strategy.

During its first year of operation, the Partnership for Prescription Assistance has matched two million Americans with public and private assistance programs that meet their prescription health needs. Furthermore, the Partnership for Prescription Assistance fits into the corporate citizenship perspective, and offers the pharmaceutical industry a viable alternative (“industry political strategy”) to state and federal legislative efforts to establish prescription drug importation programs.

This article addresses recent efforts (in the form of the Partnership for Prescription Assistance) by the US pharmaceutical industry to counteract proposed legislation to allow prescription drug importation in the USA. The article provides evidence of industry political strategy success in the implementation of the Partnership for Prescription Assistance. This article will have value to pharmaceutical industry management, health care advocates, public policy makers, and business faculty whose research interest lies in the area of business and society.

We use a data set which contains information on a nationally representative sample of drug purchases in 1996 to investigate the relationship between the type of insurance individuals have for prescription drugs — private insurance, Medicaid, or uninsured — and both the type of drugs they purchase and the prices they pay for drugs. We find that uninsured persons use more generic drugs than privately insured persons but fewer generic drugs than Medicaid recipients. Overall, uninsured persons purchase drugs whose unit costs are 45% lower than the drugs purchased by privately insured persons and 43% lower than the drugs purchased by Medicaid recipients. Differences in unit costs across insurance types reflect differences in the market basket of drugs they purchase. To compare retail drug prices across insurance types we use standardized prices — the retail unit price of each drug relative to a benchmark price. We final that uninsured individuals pay standardized prices which are, on average, 16.5% higher than the standardized prices paid by privately insured persons, and 8.4% higher than the standardized prices paid by Medicaid recipients.

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.

Objective – To examine whether local area pharmacy market structure influences contract terms between prescription drug plans (PDPs) and pharmacies under Part D.

Data – Data were collected and compiled from four sources: a national mail survey to independent pharmacies, National Council for Prescription Drug Programs (NCPDP) Pharmacy database, 2000 U.S. Census data, and 2006 Economic Census data.

Results – Reimbursements varied substantially across pharmacies. Reimbursement for 20mg Lipitor (30 tablets) ranged from $62.40 to $154.80, and for 10mg Lisinopril (30 tablets), it ranged from $1.05 to $18. For brand-name drug Lipitor, local area pharmacy ownership concentration had a consistent positive effect on pharmacy bargaining power across model specifications (estimates between 0.084 and 0.097), while local area per capita income had a consistent negative effect on pharmacy bargaining power across specifications(−0.149 to −0.153). Few statistically significant relationships were found for generic drug Lisinopril.

Conclusion – Significant variation exists in PDP reimbursement and pharmacy bargaining power with PDPs. Pharmacy bargaining power is negatively related to the competition level and the income level in the area. These relationships are stronger for brand name than for generics. As contract offers tend to be non-negotiable, variation in reimbursements and pharmacy bargaining power reflect differences in initial insurer contract offerings. Such observations fit Rubinstein's subgame perfect equilibrium model.

Implication – Our results suggest pharmacies at the most risk of closing due to low reimbursements are in areas with many competing pharmacies. This implies that closures related to Part D changes will have limited effect on Medicare beneficiaries’ access to pharmacies.

1. Under section 3 of the Milk and Dairies (Amendment) Act, 1922, the designations “Certified Milk,” “Grade A Milk,” “Pasteurised Milk” and other similar designations may only be used where a licence to sell milk under those designations has been granted by the Minister of Health or with his authority. Licences are required in the case of either Certified, Grade A (Tuberculin Tested), or Grade A Milk, both by the farmer who produces the milk and by every dealer who sells it. In the case of Pasteurised Milk a licence is required by the person who pasteurises it and by any other dealer who sells the milk.

At a meeting of the Kensington Borough Council on April 4th the Report of a Special Sub‐Committee appointed by the Public Health Committee to consider as to the institution of legal proceedings under the Sale of Food and Drugs Act in connection with preservative in cream was presented to the Council. The Report of the Sub‐Committee was as follows :—

The commercial airline is an extremely competitive, safety‐sensitive, high technology service industry. People, employees and customers, not products and machines, must be the arena of an organisation’s core competence. The implications are vast and pervasive affecting no less than the organisation’s structure, strategy, culture, and numerous operational activities. Completed by 13 respondents (executives), this audit presents a series of select findings of a human resource management audit carried out in 2001‐2 and contains extensive data on airlines from nine countries from around the globe. The conclusion drawn from these three bodies of work is that, with the exception of a handful of high performing airlines, the industry as awhole continues to function as per a traditional, top‐down, highly divisionalised, industrial model of operations and governance. This model is manifestly inappropriate in such a highly knowledge‐based service market as the airline industry. HRM expertise in general and compensation and benefits in particular are required now,more than ever, to spearhead the strategic development of a customer‐centric, learning‐oriented workforce that is capable of adapting quickly to the strategic goals and change imperatives facing the airline industry.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the perceived value of traditional versus non‐tradition benefits may be related to the employee‐employer relationship, and how the perception of that relationship might be linked to job performance and turnover intentions.

Multi‐source data were collected from a random sample of employees and their supervisors at a healthcare organization (n=457).

Non‐traditional benefits have a positive direct relationship with perceived organizational support (POS), whereas traditional health and financial benefits are not related to POS. The relationships between benefits perceptions and POS are moderated by marital status, but not gender. In addition, POS had a strong negative relationship with turnover intentions, and a positive relationship with task performance, job dedication and interpersonal facilitation.

Whereas data collected were multisource in nature, data were collected at the same point in time; therefore the authors could not test causality. Moreover, females were over‐represented in the sample, limiting generalizability.

Managing benefits costs is one of many challenges facing human resource managers in the current economy. This study provides a better understanding of the relationship between employee benefits and important outcomes. The paper's findings emphasize the importance of assessing employees' perceived value of benefits when human resource managers are making decisions about benefit programs.

This study contributes to the literature in several ways. First, this study offers evidence to solve past conflicts regarding the existence and nature of the relationship between benefits and POS. Second, this research contributes to the need to document potential work outcomes of benefit packages. Third, it distinguishes among different kinds of benefits (traditional vs non‐traditional), and shows that non‐traditional benefits can signal to employees how much they are valued by the organization.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of diabetes, patient age, and health insurance on the number of prescription and non‐prescription drugs mentioned (ordered or provided) per physician visit in the USA.

The National Center for Health Statistics annually conducts three surveys about ambulatory care physician visits: the National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey, the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey – outpatient departments, and the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey – emergency departments. For this study, the data collected in 2003 and 2004 by these surveys were analyzed with the SAS procedures SURVEYMEANS and SURVEYREG, which can take into account the multistage sample design of these surveys.

Regression analyses show significant effects of diabetes, patient age, and health insurance provider on the number of prescription drug mentions and non‐prescription drug mentions per physician visit. Among adults greater than 18 years old, and even for visits by persons greater than 75 years old, diabetes visits relative to non‐diabetes visits had significantly more prescription drug mentions per visit and significantly more non‐prescription drug mentions per visit physician visits, for both general purposes and diabetes, without insurance coverage had significantly fewer prescription drug mentions per visit than the corresponding visits covered by either private health insurance, Medicare, or Medicaid. Thus, the results show that physicians use more prescription drugs and non‐prescription drugs to manage diabetes visits than non‐diabetes visits and prescribe fewer medications when patients have no insurance than when they have Medicare, Medicaid, or private health insurance.

Results from a nationally representative sample of physician visits in the USA show that physicians order or provide substantially more drugs for diabetes visits. These results suggest that diabetes sharply increases drug consumption. Also, physicians are likely to prescribe more medications to patients who have health insurance relative to patients without health insurance.