Your medicine may come with a new side effect: financial pain. Prescription-drug spending grew 12.2% in 2014—five times as fast as the year before—according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. And the sickest Americans bear the biggest burden. Some 43% of those in fair or poor health say it’s somewhat or very difficult to afford their medications, and 37% say they’ve skipped out on filling a prescription because of cost, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF).
What has changed? Generic drugs, long an affordable alternative to name-brand medicines, have become part of the problem. The average price of the 50 most popular generic drugs increased 373% between 2010 and 2014, according to OptumRx, a pharmacy benefit management company. One culprit is consolidation: After a decade of mergers, three big companies now control 40% of the generics market, says Gerard Anderson, professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Weaker competition means drug companies can charge your insurer more. Meanwhile, pricey new miracle drugs—like hepatitis C treatment Sovaldi ($1,000 per pill for an 84-pill course)—are also a key factor forcing up overall medication costs.
Read Full Article »