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  • Visualizing Health Policy: Recent Trends in Prescription Drug Costs

    News Release

    This Visualizing Health Policy infographic spotlights national spending on prescription drugs and the public’s views on pharmaceutical prices. Prescription drug spending rose sharply in 2014, driven by growth in expenditures on specialty drugs, including medications to treat cancer and hepatitis C. Medicare’s spending on prescription pharmaceuticals also has risen, largely due to the addition of the Medicare prescription drug benefit in 2006: between 2004 and 2014, the program’s share of US drug expenditures increased from…

  • A New Way of Measuring Health Costs Sheds Light on Recent Health Spending Trends

    Issue Brief

    National health spending started to grow more rapidly recently after several years of unusually slow growth. This analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation and the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis helps to dissect why that may be happening. Using recently-released disease-based health spending data compiled by the federal government, the analysis finds that the drivers of health spending growth shifted in the years following the Great Recession. The number of people treated for various diseases picked up,…

  • Allowing Medicare to Negotiate Drug Prices Is A Popular Idea But May Not Produce Substantial Savings

    News Release

    In response to rising drug costs, some policymakers and presidential candidates, including Republican Donald Trump and Democrats Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, have proposed allowing Medicare to negotiate directly with pharmaceutical companies over the price of prescription drugs, in contrast to the current approach under Medicare Part D drug where private plans do the negotiating.  A version of this proposal was also included in the Obama Administration’s FY 2016 and FY 2017 budgets. While the…

  • How High Drug Prices Weigh on the Sickest Americans

    From Drew Altman

    In this column for The Wall Street Journal's Think Tank, Drew Altman explores the data behind public concern about prescription drug costs and highlights that the people most in need are the most burdened by the problem.

  • Prescription Drugs’ Sizable Share of Health Spending

    News Release

    In his latest column for The Wall Street Journal‘s Think Tank, Drew Altman explains why prescription drug spending may be a larger share of health spending than most people think, depending on how you look at it. All previous columns by Drew Altman are online.  

  • Prescription Drugs’ Sizable Share of Health Spending

    From Drew Altman

    In this column for The Wall Street Journal’s Think Tank, Drew Altman explains why prescription drug spending may be a larger share of health spending than most people think, depending on how you look at it.

  • Although a Small Share of Medicare Part D Enrollees Take Specialty Drugs, A New Analysis Finds Those Who Do Can Face Thousands of Dollars in Out-of-Pocket Drug Costs Despite Plan Limits on Catastrophic Expenses

    News Release

    Some Medicare Part D enrollees can expect to pay thousands of dollars out-of-pocket for a single specialty drug in 2016, even though Part D plans provide substantial protection against catastrophic costs, according to a new analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation. The findings illustrate how high prescription drug prices, one of the public's top health care concerns, pose a financial challenge not only for Medicare and other federal health programs but for people on Medicare…

  • It Pays to Shop: Variation in Out-of-Pocket Costs for Medicare Part D Enrollees in 2016

    Issue Brief

    This analysis focuses on out-of-pocket drug costs for Medicare Part D enrollees in 2016 for specialty, brand, and generic drugs. Part D drug plans differ considerably in the drugs they list on their formularies, their use of formulary tiers, and the level and structure of cost sharing applied to those tiers. Plan decisions affect different beneficiaries in different ways, depending on the drugs they use. The financial consequences for Part D plan enrollees can be…