Prescription volume causes continued rise in drug costs. (Briefing).

U.S. spending on prescription drugs rose 17% in 2001, the fourth year in a row to see escalation of 17% or more. The rise is attributed to the increase in both the volume and expense of drugs, according to a new study.

Spending on drugs doubled from 1997 to 2001, rising from $78.9 billion to $154.5 billion, according to the study by the National Institute for Health Care Management.

A rise in the volume of prescription drugs sold was the major factor for the increase in pharmaceutical costs in 2001, the report said.

A shift to more expensive and mostly new drugs in 2001 also had a big effect. The average price of a prescription rose 10% to $49.84 in 2001 from $45.27 in 2000.

Marketing to both consumers and doctors of new, more expensive drugs had an effect, increasing spending by 36% in 2000 and 24% in 2001, the report said.

The institute had no way to quantify how much of the increase in spending reflected patients' requests for drugs from doctors, said Steven Findlay, the author of the report. "We've hypothesized that it's an increasing factor" he said. "But there's a lot of difficulty tweaking out the independent effect of consumer promotion from marketing and advertising to doctors."

The report also said the rise in spending was related to more cases of chronic conditions and increased coverage of prescription drugs by managed-care plans in the past 10 years.

Popular Prescriptions

The National Institute for Health Care Management noted a sharp rise in
the volume of prescriptions for just 50 of the almost 10,000 drugs
studied. Those drugs accounted for 62.3% of the increase from 2000 to
2001 and included:

Drug                        Increase

Ulcer drug Protonix           490.0%
Antidepressant Celexa          54.5%
Painkiller OxyContin           41.0%
Arthritis drug Vioxx           33.5%
Antipsychotic drug Zyprexa     28.6%
Cholesterol drug Zocor         24.0%
Cholesterol drug Lipitor       22.3%

Source: National Institute for Health Care Management