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Diabetes Drugs are now the top driver in
Drug spending growth, says report
Diabetes treatments are now the leading
driver of prescription drug spending growth,
displacing lipid-lowering drugs, which
tumbled in price after a reign of 10 years
in the top position. Generic drugs are
cutting the cost of treating high
cholesterol.
That’s the conclusion of Medco Health
Solutions, Inc., a pharmacy benefit
management company, in its just released
“2008 Drug Trend Report,” a comprehensive
analysis of prescription drug spending and
utilization.
The report shows that despite continued
growth in the use of cholesterol drugs,
spending fell 8.5 percent in 2007 as usage
of lower-cost generic versions of Pravachol
and Zocor expanded in the marketplace. As a
result, lipid-lowering medications
experienced the greatest spending decline of
all drug categories.
Meanwhile, spending on diabetes drugs
increased 12 percent due to shifts toward
higher-cost treatments, brand-name drug
price inflation, and moderate growth in the
number of patients receiving treatment.
A Move to Newer Diabetes Drugs
Although spending on diabetes medications
increased substantially, use of the drugs
increased by only 2.3 percent in 2007. The
discrepancy is explained by the fact that
the cost of diabetes treatments rose sharply
as patients shifted to newer drugs. These
recently introduced medications have
advantages over older drugs because they are
faster-acting and help patients better
maintain consistent blood sugar levels to
prevent complications.
A sharp drop in Avandia use due to safety
concerns, the withdrawal from the market of
an inhalable form of insulin, and declining
unit costs for many generic versions of
diabetes drugs were not enough to offset the
trend toward higher-cost treatments.
“The diabetes epidemic and the introduction
of new products are reshaping prescription
spending patterns,” says Medco Chief Medical
Officer Robert S. Epstein, MD. “The number
of people diagnosed with diabetes is
increasing by about a million patients per
year, meaning more people need complex drug
therapies to control their blood sugar.”
Two- or three-drug combinations are
frequently being used to reduce the
complications associated with diabetes,
which affects about 21 million Americans.
However, only 7 percent of patients with the
disorder achieve target goals for blood
glucose, cholesterol and blood pressure.
For a decade, cholesterol drugs were the
largest driver of “drug trend” –a measure of
spending growth for pharmacy benefit plans.
These medications still account for a
sizable 10.8 percent of all prescription
costs, with utilization rising 5.9 percent
last year as new clinical guidelines
expanded the population that can benefit
from these treatments.
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