Researchers looked at pricing data for 79 brand-name drugs between 2015-2020 to assess the validity of drugmakers’ claims that wholesale drug prices do not accurately reflect the out-of-pocket costs patients will pay.
They found that the drugs’ list prices increased by nearly 17 percent, and patients’ out-of-pocket spending increased by about 3.5 percent.
The increases in out-of-pocket cost varied by patients’ insurance type. Patients who had fixed copayments (about half of insured Americans) were mostly unaffected by drug price increases, but out-of-pocket costs for patients with deductibles and coinsurance (the other half of insured Americans) increased by 15 percent.
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