New ESI Data Shows Medicine Spending Grew Just 1.5% in 2017

In early February 2018, Express Scripts Institute (ESI) released the 2017 Drug Report, which included new data that showed spending on medicines by ESI’s commercial plan sponsors grew just 1.5 percent in 2017, which is the smallest increase since they started tracking this data. Additionally, drug spending declined for almost half of commercial payers and Medicare, Medicaid, and exchange plans all saw very modest increases. As you can see in this chart by the Drug Channels Institute, costs for traditional drugs declined, largely due to generic substitutions available in the blood cholesterol class and pricing pressures for insulins, while costs for specialty drugs only increased modestly. According to the report, spending on traditional drugs, which accounted for 59.2% of total spending, decreased 4.3%, due primarily to a 4.9% drop in unit costs. Generic fill rates increased from 85.1% in 2016 to 86.2% in 2017. Additionally, spending on specialty drugs, which accounted for 40.8% of total spending, was up 11.3% in 2017 – the lowest increase ESI has seen to date. ESI addressed the opioid epidemic in the annual report, noting that an estimated 2 million Americans or either dependent on prescription narcotics or abuse them, and America loses more than 115 lives every day due to opioid overdose. ESI launched an Advanced Opioid Management solution in September 2017, and since that time, among plans that are participating, a 60% reduction in the average days’ supply pe...
Source: Policy and Medicine - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs