David Belk, M.D.
“Market forces clearly have no effect whatsoever on the prices of brand name medications…………..”
By David Belk, M.D.
Last April I did a study showing the extreme rate of inflation for brand name medications. I recently updated this to include brand name prices up until October of last year. As you might expect, brand name prescription drug prices are still skyrocketing in price.
The average rate of inflation for the 335 brand name prescription listings I surveyed was 56% over three years–16 times the overall rate of inflation in the US.
Now this original study was strictly for medications that had no generic competition. This time, I wanted to see if it made a difference whether a generic version of the medication was available or not, so I made a second list of 86 medications that had very inexpensive generic versions on the market for years already.
What I found surprised me. There was almost no difference. Brand name medications that had inexpensive generic equivalents still went up an average of 46% in price over three year, even though the generic versions of these medications dropped an average of 11% in price during that time!
What this implies is that market forces clearly have no effect whatsoever on the prices of brand name medications. See for yourself:
http://truecostofhealthcare.net/brand-name-medication-prices/
Dave Belk MD – truecostofhealthcare.com>
