But as is typical, the brand drugs get all the attention, and often lost in our month-by-month pricing reviews is the chronically-overlooked generic drug marketplace.
In the simplest of terms, the U.S. drug supply chain is built on product life cycles. At its foundational core, we deal with patent-protected brand drug prices that eventually give way to more robust, competitive generic drug cost deflation. In essence, we need new drugs to become old drugs to make way for more new drugs and so on.
But much to our frequent dismay, despite this needed brand-generic balancing act, generics are routinely forgotten and ignored.
Today, we give them their due.
As you may have seen in this week’s report, in our tracking of generic drug acquisition costs, we saw a startling break from historic deflationary trends with year-over-year inflation hitting the generic marketplace, per the data from CMS National Average Drug Acquisition Cost (NADAC), which is compiled using surveyed pharmacy invoice acquisition cost data.In April, the year-over-year (YoY) NADAC price changes on oral solid generics and all generics was at +4.6% and +3.4%, respectively. In May, the YoY NADAC price changes on oral solid generics and all generics was at +8.4% and +6.0%, respectively. In June, the YoY NADAC price changes on oral solid generics and all generics was at -5.2% and -5.7%, respectively. In July, the YoY NADAC price changes on oral solid generics and all generics was at +9.1% and +6.9%, respectively.
For those that haven’t religiously been reading our reports or tracking this data, this was nothing short of a stunner, as NADAC has been a tremendous asset to analyze and quantify the consistent churn of efficiency in the generic market.
So what gives? Why is NADAC data showing a break in trend? Has the generic marketplace bottomed out?
In today’s report, we dig into what the data is telling us, how the data’s sourcing could impact our perspectives of drug pricing, unpack NADAC’s utility and limitations, and juxtapose it all against the prevailing way that drugs are bought and sold in the U.S.CHECK OUT OUR REPORT |
