MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Nitin Mehta PhD Associate Professor in Marketing Rotman School MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: The focus of this paper is an investigation of the increase in health care costs associated with chronic disease in the context of consumers enrolled in employer sponsored insurance plans. Chronic illnesses – including conditions such as heart disease, cancer, hypertension, rheumatoid arthritis, respiratory diseases, diabetes, and kidney disease – account for nearly 75 percent of health care expenditures in the U.S. Treatments vary widely in terms of cost and impact: expensive “frontier” treatments provide the best outcome for only the seriously ill, while cheaper, established treatments prove effective for most other patients. As an example, the annual cost to an insurer for “biologics” – novel genetically modified protein drugs – is upwards of $20,000, while the more established drug – methotrexate – costs only $1,000 a year. We investigate whether a part of the increase in healthcare costs stems from consumers opting for the more expensive treatments even when the lesser expensive treatments may have worked well. To do so, we examined data from a health insurer in the United States on the insurance plan and treatment options for 3,000 chronically ill patients over a three year period. (more…)