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Friday, September 20, 2013

Prescription Drug Spending Falls In 2012, CMS says

by Steve Teske

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You won’t see this happen too often in the world of health care, but spending on a health care sector—in this case prescription drugs--actually fell in 2012 . In its annual report on national health care spending released Sept. 18, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services said spending on prescription drugs fell 0.8 percent in 2012, to about $260 billion. The drop was due in part to declines in the average price paid for medications because a number of popular brand-name drugs lost patent protections, the agency said. Spending on prescription drugs is expected to rise 0.6 percent in 2013, still a very low rate for this sector, but then shoot up 5.2 percent in 2014 as more individuals gain coverage under the Affordable Care Act, CMS said. Drug spending is expected to rise an average of 6.5 percent annually from 2015 to 2022, it added. The report is scheduled to be published in the Octoboer issue of the journal "Health Affairs."
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