Private insurance firms participating in Medicare can offer up to three principal plan types: coordinated care plans (CCPs), prescription drug plans (PDPs), and private fee for service (PFFS) plans. Firms can make entry and marketing decisions separately across plan types and geographic regions....

Since January 2006 all Medicare beneficiaries have been eligible to obtain outpatient prescription drug coverage through private stand-alone drug plans (PDPs). We estimate a model of beneficiary demand for PDPs and use it to compute the loss of consumer surplus due to tightening PDP formularies...