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April 22, 2015
Record Number of Prescriptions Filled, Big Increase
in Drug Spending Parsippany, NJ—If pharmacists remember 2014 as a busy year, here’s why: a record volume of 4.3 billion prescriptions was filled. A new report from the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics also notes that total spending on U.S. medicines increased 10.3% on a real per capita basis to $373.9 billion in 2014. Total dollars spent on medications in the U.S. rose 13.1% on a nominal basis last year, up from a 3.2% increase in 2013. Why did that occur? The report suggests that primary drivers include higher spending on innovative new treatment options, the lower impact of patent expiries, and increases in list prices of branded medicines. Last year also marked the highest number of transformative medicines launched in more than a decade, 42, according to the paper’s authors. Specialty medications created much of last year’s innovation-led spending growth of 26.5%, according to the IMS Institute. Those drugs made up one-third of all medicine spending, up from 23% 5 years ago. New drugs contributed $20.3 billion to growth in 2014. Most notable were four new hepatitis C therapies that allowed 10 times as many patients to be treated for that disease compared to 2013; those accounted for $11.3 billion of the spending. At the same time, demand for healthcare services declined in 2014 despite it being the first year of insurance coverage for millions of Americans under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). From the end of September 2013 to year-end 2014, the uninsured rate was reduced by 5.1%, with 15.7 million people added to the insured population due to the ACA’s Medicaid expansion, Health Insurance Exchanges, and the continued economic recovery, according to the report. “Last year’s $43 billion growth in spending on medicines was record-setting and the result of simultaneous very high levels of spending on new drugs and an unusually low level of patent expiry impact,” said Murray Aitken, IMS Health senior vice president and executive director of the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics. “It also was a landmark year in the implementation of the Affordable Care Act—and yet, the increase in the number of insured patients under the ACA directly accounted for only $1 billion of the spending growth as patients took some time to ramp up their medicine use.” At the same time, demand for healthcare services declined, despite 2014 being the first year of the ACA. While some newly insured Americans—especially those on Medicaid—prompted a significant increase in dispensed prescriptions, commercially insured patients reduced their prescription usage substantially in 2014, the report states. “The biggest negative in 2014 comes from those with employer-based insurance using significantly fewer medicines than those in the past. This is likely a result of a continued cost shifting, as employees are required to pay higher deductibles and copayments. In addition, we saw the movement of some people from employer-based insurance to public health exchanges. It remains to be seen how this will play out in 2015 and beyond.” |
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