According to a recent study that compared prescription drug use between Medicare beneficiaries and veterans over the age of 65 with diabetes:

• Brand-name drug use in Medicare was 2 to 3 times that in the Veterans Administration
• Adjusted HRR (hospital referral region)-level brand-name statin use ranged (from the 5th to 95th percentiles) from 41.0% to 58.3% in Medicare and from 6.2% to 38.2% in the VA
• For each drug group, the 95th-percentile HRR in the VA had lower brand-name drug use than the 5th-percentile HRR in Medicare
• Medicare spending in this population would have been $1.4 billion less if brand-name drug use matched that of the VA

Source: "Brand-Name Prescription Drug Use Among Veterans Affairs and Medicare Part D Patients With Diabetes: A National Cohort Comparison," Annals of Internal Medicine, abstract only, June 11, 2013, http://annals.org/article.aspx?articleid=1696030