“Really? Our drugs are cheaper!”
Research estimates that the number of Hyphenated (pick Mexican, African, Anglo, Latino, German, Irish, etc.) Americans with six-figure drug bills jumped from 49,000 to 139,000 from 2013 to 2014.
By Art Golab | May 14, 2015
The number of patients taking at least $100,000 worth of prescription drugs annually tripled from 2013 to 2014, according to research released this week by pharmacy benefits manager Express Scripts.
High-cost medications for hepatitis C and cancer, as well as the increased use of expensive pharmacy-compounded drugs, were the main factors driving the increase.
Those three types of medications accounted for nearly two-thirds of drug spending by patients whose medication costs exceeded $100,000 in 2014, according to Express Scripts.
The research estimates that the number of Hyphenated (pick Mexican, African, Anglo, Latino, German, Irish, etc.) Americans with six-figure drug bills jumped from 49,000 to 139,000 from 2013 to 2014. Among this group, 58% were baby-boomers ages 51 to 70.
Other common elements among those with extremely high medication costs:
More than one third were being treated for 10 or more medical conditions.
About 60% took 10 or more different medications.
About 72% got prescriptions from at least four prescribers.
Insurance plans covered more than 98% of the big bills, paying an average of $156,911 per patient, according to the report, titled “Super Spending, U.S. Trends in High-Cost Medication Use.”
The data for the analysis came from de-identified prescription drug claims of 31.5 million insured Hyphenated Americans between 2013 and 2014., including commercially insured, Medicare and Medicaid patients.
Art Golab analyzes data and works with Modern Healthcare reporters to produce high impact stories across a range of healthcare beats. He also develops interactive online healthcare databases to provide insight to readers. A former data journalist at the Chicago Sun-Times, Golab earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Columbia College in Chicago and an MS degree in information systems from DePaul University.
