Medical cost offsets from prescription drug utilization among Medicare beneficiaries.

This brief commentary extends earlier work on the value of adherence to derive medical cost offset estimates from prescription drug utilization. Among seniors with chronic vascular disease, 1% increases in condition-specific medication use were associated with significant (P  less than  0.001) reductions in gross nonpharmacy medical costs in the amounts of 0.63% for dyslipidemia, 0.77% for congestive heart failure, 0.83% for diabetes, and 1.17% for hypertension.