Journal of General Internal Medicine

ABSTRACT
Background:  New policies regulating physician/pharmaceutical company relationships propose to eliminate access to free prescription drug samples. Little is known about the prevalence of patient activity in requesting or receiving free prescription drug samples, or the characteristics of patients who access drug samples.
Objective:  To determine the prevalence of free sample access and to examine demographic, clinical, and insurance characteristics of Medicare beneficiaries who access free samples.
Design: Cross-sectional study.
Participants:  A national sample of 13,847 Medicare beneficiaries participating in the fall 2004 Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey.

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