Joy's Favorite Article of the Month
This month I recommend a research letter in JAMA from Dusetzina et al. titled Specialty Drug Pricing and Out-of-Pocket Spending on Orally Administered Anticancer Drugs in Medicare Part D, 2010 to 2019.
The authors examined Medicare formulary and pricing data and found that mean prices for oral anticancer drugs increased by 5.8% per year beyond the rate of inflation. The average yearly patient out-of-pocket spending was $8,794 in 2010, and that number is expected to go up to $10,470 in 2019. In an extreme example, the mean monthly point-of-sale price (aka the sticker price) for anticancer drugs in 2018 was nearly $18,000 per month. Pharma is quick to point out that almost no one pays the point-of-sale price for a drug, but patient coinsurance is based on the point-of-sale price.
Despite policy changes aimed at closing the Medicare Part D coverage gap, patients paid more out-of-pocket for cancer drugs in 2018 than they did in 2010, and the researchers suggest that additional policies changes are needed to ensure patient access to high-cost drugs.
Joy Eckert, MPH is passionate about peer-reviewed literature about pharmaceutical marketing and conflicts of interest. She tweets about health policy at @joyonarant.
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