Currie Janet, Stabile Mark, Jones Lauren
Princeton University and NBER, United States.
University of Toronto and NBER, Canada.
J Health Econ. 2014 Sep;37:58-69. doi: 10.1016/j.jhealeco.2014.05.002. Epub 2014 May 16.
We examine the effects of a policy change in the province of Quebec, Canada which greatly expanded insurance coverage for prescription medications. We show that the change was associated with a sharp increase in the use of stimulant medications commonly prescribed for ADHD in Quebec relative to the rest of Canada. We ask whether this increase in medication use was associated with improvements in emotional functioning or academic outcomes among children with ADHD. We find little evidence of improvement in either the medium or the long run. Our results are silent on the effects on optimal use of medication for ADHD, but suggest that expanding medication in a community setting had little positive benefit and may have had harmful effects given the average way these drugs are used in the community.
我们研究了加拿大魁北克省一项政策变化的影响，该政策大幅扩大了处方药的保险覆盖范围。我们发现，这一变化与魁北克省相对于加拿大其他地区而言，常用于治疗多动症的刺激性药物使用量急剧增加有关。我们探讨了药物使用量的增加是否与多动症儿童的情绪功能改善或学业成绩提高相关。我们发现，从中期或长期来看，几乎没有改善的迹象。我们的研究结果未涉及对多动症药物最佳使用效果的影响，但表明在社区环境中扩大药物使用几乎没有积极益处，而且鉴于这些药物在社区中的一般使用方式，可能还产生了有害影响。
