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By Lisa Rapaport
(Reuters Health) – Shortages of prescription drugs could boost prices by twice as much as drugs increase, adding $ 230 million a year to the cost of drugs in the United States, according to a new study.
Researchers looked at data on 90 drugs in shortages between December 2015 and December 2016. They compared average wholesale drug prices for 11 months before and after shortages began, and also saw a decade of increases prices.
In the 11 months preceding the shortages, drug prices rose an average of 7.3%, according to researchers at the Annals of Internal Medicine. In the following 11 months, prices jumped 16% on average.
"Patients exposed to obvious costs need to know that drugs can become more expensive in the event of a shortage," said lead author of the study, Inmaculada Hernandez, of the Faculty of Pharmacy of the United States. University of Pittsburgh.
Hernandez said by email that sometimes patients who have no insurance or who do not have drug insurance are likely to turn to a similar drug unaffected by shortages. But it will not always be an option.
"The ability to switch to alternative therapies depends on the drug and the illness that patients are taking it on," said Hernandez.
Although the researchers were unable to assess the reasons for the price increases, they found a difference based on the number of manufacturers that manufactured insufficient quantities of drugs.
According to the analysis, when drugs were manufactured by three or fewer companies, prices increased on average by 12.1% in the 11 months preceding a shortage and by 24.7% on average over the 11 following months.
By contrast, when four or more manufacturers sold the same drug, prices increased on average by 2.5% in the eleven months preceding a shortage and by 4.8% on average thereafter.
The researchers calculated that, within 11 months of the start of the shortage, the expected price increase for all drugs was 20%, compared with 9% in the absence of a shortage.
Data on drug shortages come from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and price data comes from AnalySource.
One of the limitations of the study is that wholesale prices do not always reflect the final price after rebates granted by manufacturers or discounts negotiated by buyers.
However, the findings point to a serious public health problem that occurs when people do not have access to the medications they need, says Stacie Dusetzina, a researcher at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, Tennessee .
"It's really a very simple case of supply and demand – if the supply is low and the demand high, the price goes up," Mr Dusetzina said via e-mail.
"Some of these increases will be covered by insurance but if patients pay deductibles (the amount you pay before your insurance is started) or if they have to pay a percentage of the price (co-insurance), they could see their pocket spending increase, "added Mr. Dusetzina." For patients who are uninsured, they should pay the high price. "
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2QJ4LxD Annals of Internal Medicine, online September 17, 2018.
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