Pra17 Clinical, Public Health, and Economic Issues Associated With Switching Second-Generation Antihistamines From Prescription to Over-the-Counter

Prasad, Madu G; Shih, Yct; Br, Luce

doi:10.1016/s1098-3015(10)60991-6

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“…Previous work has speculated about the existence of substantial costs of access restrictions to medications in general to consumer welfare [ 9 , 10 ]. Studies have explored the consequences of interactions of prescription requirements and insurance status on consumer costs [ 11 , 12 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Willingness-To-Accept Pharmaceutical Retail Inconvenience: Evidence from a Contingent Choice Experiment

2015

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ObjectivesRestrictions on retail purchases of pseudoephedrine are one regulatory approach to reduce the social costs of methamphetamine production and use, but may impose costs on legitimate users of nasal decongestants. This is the first study to evaluate the costs of restricting access to medications on consumer welfare. Our objective was to measure the inconvenience cost consumers place on restrictions for cold medication purchases including identification requirements, purchase limits, over-the-counter availability, prescription requirements, and the active ingredient.MethodsWe conducted a contingent choice experiment with Amazon Mechanical Turk workers that presented participants with randomized, hypothetical product prices and combinations of restrictions that reflect the range of public policies. We used a conditional logit model to calculate willingness-to-accept each restriction.ResultsRespondents’ willingness-to-accept prescription requirements was $14.17 ($9.76–$18.58) and behind-the-counter restrictions was $9.68 ($7.03–$12.33) per box of pseudoephedrine product. Participants were willing to pay $4.09 ($1.66–$6.52) per box to purchase pseudoephedrine-based products over phenylephrine-based products.ConclusionsRestricting access to medicines as a means of reducing the social costs of non-medical use can imply large inconvenience costs for legitimate consumers. These results are relevant to discussions of retail access restrictions on other medications.

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