CHART REVIEW – AVERAGE ANNUAL SPENDING AND UTILIZATION FOR 80 MEDICARE PART B AND D PRESCRIPTION DRUGS

Jonathan Keisling, Health Care Policy Analyst

In 2016, 14 percent of Medicare spending was on prescription drugs, and, as the chart below shows, utilization rather than extremely high drug costs is driving this spending. The chart overlays the data for utilization and cost per user for the top 80 drugs by cost and use. For this analysis, 80 drugs were chosen, 40 for each program, based on the following criteria: top 15 for toal spending, top 15 for spending per user, and/or the top 10 highest annual unit cost increases. These 80 drugs were used by 11 million beneficiaries and cost Medicare roughly $47 billion in 2016—yet the bulk of that spending was on drugs that cost relatively little. Only 255 people used the most expensive drug, with total spending on that drug in 2016 totaling $570,000 per beneficiary—making up 0.3 percent of the total annual cost of these 80 drugs. In contrast, the most used drug comprised over 5 percent—1.6 million people took the most used drug, with per beneficiary spending on that drug totaling $1,500 (which works out to $8 per dose).

https://www.americanactionforum.org/weekly-checkup/the-trump-administrations-very-busy-health-policy-week/#ixzz5VjZ46fOa
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