Among the aims of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is reducing health care costs for older adults by eliminating cost sharing for certain drugs and vaccines covered by Medicare Part D. To help determine if the impact matches the IRA's intent, a team led by Dima Qato-;Hygeia Centennial Chair and Associate Professor at the USC Mann School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences-;evaluated the impact of the IRA policy removing patient out of pocket costs on the uptake of shingles vaccinations, the most commonly-administered vaccine covered by Part D. Published as a research letter in JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association , the study found that, compared to the year before the implementation of the IRA policy on January 2023, shingles vaccinations covered by Part D rose by 46%.
Physicians recommend the shingles vaccine for adults 50 years and older, since the risk of the viral infection rises with age. Shingles, which affects about one in three people nationally, begins with a painful rash and may lead to the chronic nerve pain of postherpetic neuralgia. Comparing Part D to commercial insurance, Qato and colleagues found that shingles vaccinations of people with private coverage dropped by 21% over the period examined-;from 374,176 per month to 295,231.
"Policy matters," says Qato, who also directs the Mann School's Program on Medicines and Public Health and is a senior fellow at the USC Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics. "And when these policies eli.
