U.S. Spent $374 Billion on Prescription Drugs Last Year, Up 13%; Increase Largely Due To Hep C Cures and Limited Generic Competition

The U.S. healthcare system spent $373.9 billion on prescription drugs in 2014, up 13.1 percent from the year before, and the highest rate of spending growth since 2001, according to a report by IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics. View the full report, including IMS video commentary here. A number of factors point to the fact that this dramatic increase is not so much a trend, but an anomaly. "2014 was a remarkable year," Murray Aitken, executive director of the IMS Institute. "We're probably not going to see it again." Last year saw the FDA approve a near-record 42 novel medicines, including 18 for rare diseases--those that affect fewer than 200,000 Americans. Ten of the new drugs were designated as breakthrough therapies, for conditions including multiple sclerosis, various cancers, and hepatitis C. “The availability of new hepatitis C treatments and very few products losing patent protection” account for the surge, states Aitken. “Sovaldi was the biggest drug launch in history and accounted for about $8 billion, or 2 of the 13 percent increase.” Furthermore, in 2013, patients were holding off on hep C treatments in anticipation of Gilead Sciences’ cure due out in 2014. This also added to the drastic year over year increase. Over 161,000 patients started treatment for hepatitis C in 2014, “more than four times the previous peak and nearly ten times more than in the previous year as spending on widely adopted new treatments totaled $12.3Bn,” st...
Source: Policy and Medicine - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs