Table 2.
Bivariate Relationships with Cost-related Medication Skipping (1998 Data)*
| Patient characteristics | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Continuous variables (mean) | Skipping | No skipping | P Value |
| Age (years) | 74.8 | 75.4 | .17 |
| Health status | |||
| Physical component scale | 34.7 | 40.7 | <.0001 |
| Mental component scale | 46.8 | 52.5 | <.0001 |
| Number of prescription medications | 4.6 | 4.0 | .003 |
| Disease count | 2.5 | 2.2 | .003 |
| Number of outpatients visits in last 6 months | 3.8 | 3.6 | .32 |
| Premium costs ($) | 49.7 | 46.0 | .42 |
| Categorical variables (% skipping) | Mean % Skipping | P Value |
|---|---|---|
| Female | .13 | |
| Male | 8.5 | |
| Female | 10.2 | |
| Race | .09 | |
| White | 9.1 | |
| Nonwhite black | 11.9 | |
| Income | <.0001 | |
| Low | 15.2 | |
| High | 6.2 | |
| High school graduate | .0003 | |
| Yes | 8.0 | |
| No | 13.8 | |
| Married | .036 | |
| Yes | 8.5 | |
| No | 10.9 | |
| HMO member | .54 | |
| Yes | 9.1 | |
| No | 9.7 | |
| Drug coverage | <.0001 | |
| Yes | 6.8 | |
| No | 16.1 | |
| Inpatient stay (1 or more) | .55 | |
| Yes | 9.9 | |
| No | 9.1 | |
| Monthly out-of-pocket medication costs | <.0001 | |
| $0 | 5.6 | |
| $1 to $24 | 5.7 | |
| $25 to $49 | 8.1 | |
| $50 to $99 | 16.0 | |
| $100 to $199 | 19.6 | |
| >$200 | 28.2 | |
| Physician-patient relationship quality (quartiles) | <.0001 | |
| 1 (highest quality) | 6.0 | |
| 2 | 6.6 | |
| 3 | 8.4 | |
| 4 | 14.7 |
*
We applied sampling weights to all results to correct for difference in sampling probabilities across the strata. The observed sample size was 7,130 for 1998