American Prescription Drug Use

Generation Rx

How Prescription Drugs Are Altering American Lives,

Minds, and Bodies

Greg Critser

Houghton Mifflin Company

2005

The average number of prescriptions per person, annually, in 1993 was seven.

The average number of prescriptions per person, annually, in 2000 was eleven.

The average number of prescriptions per person, annually, in 2004 was twelve.

The total number of annual prescriptions in the United States now stands at about 3 billion.

 

The cost per year is about $180 billion, headed to an estimated $414 billion by 2011.

 

Pretty soon, you are talking real money

 

 

Drug prices rise with benefits

 

Thursday, March 06, 2008

By Bill Walsh

WASHINGTON -- Pharmaceutical companies have raised the price of popular brand-name prescription drugs since the government started picking up part of the tab, according to a study by a prominent seniors' advocacy group.

AARP issued a report Wednesday saying that the wholesale price of the brand-name drugs used most frequently by seniors rose on average 7.4 percent in 2007, nearly twice the rate of inflation.

The study drew a correlation between price increases and the implementation of Medicare's new prescription drug benefit in 2006 when the federal government for the first time agreed to subsidize drug purchases for seniors. "This report raises questions about why the pharmaceutical companies so dramatically increased the costs of popular brand-name drugs at the same time Medicare began offering drug coverage," John Rother, AARP's chief lobbyist, said in a statement accompanying the report.

Drug firms dispute study - The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the drug industry trade group, took issue with AARP's findings saying, that prescription medicine increased in price just 1.4 percent from 2006 to 2007.

The disparity appears to be that AARP considered the costs of brand-name drugs, which are the most expensive, while PhRMA included the prices of much-cheaper generic versions.

"AARP's numbers simply do not reflect the true amounts that seniors pay for their medicines," PhRMA Senior Vice President Ken Johnson said. "And they do not reflect the clear downward trend in prescription drug price growth."

AARP has been tracking the price of popular prescription drugs since 2002. The biggest hikes of the 220 drugs studied by AARP came in 2006 and 2007, after the Medicare drug benefit went into effect. The average wholesale price increases in those years were 7.1 percent and 7.4 percent, respectively.

For a senior citizen, the cost of three brand-name prescriptions for treatment of a chronic condition went up $1,600 between 2002 and 2007, according to an evaluation by AARP's Public Policy Institute and the Univ Popular and costly

The study found that some of the most popular drugs have seen the greatest price increases. The cost of the 50 milligram dosage of the respiratory medicine Advair rose by 53 percent over the five-year period. Forty milligram capsules of Nexium, used to treat acid reflux, shot up 159.7 percent, the analysis showed.

While Medicare now covers a substantial cost of prescription drugs for millions of American seniors, higher prices mean that seniors will fall into the coverage gap, known as the "doughnut hole" more quickly.

University of Minnesota.