Trends in prescription drug spending : 2016-2021 ASPE issue brief Parasrampuria, Sonal, author. Murphy, Stephen (Of Office of Science and Data Policy, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation), author. Health Expenditures -- trends Prescription Drugs -- economics In 2021, the U.S. health care system spent $603 billion on prescription drugs, before accounting for rebates, of which $421 billion was on retail drugs. Spending growth on drugs was largely due to growth in spending per prescription, and to a lesser extent by increased utilization (i.e., more prescriptions). Expenditure growth was larger for non-retail drug expenditures (25%) than for retail expenditures (13%). Between 2016 and 2021, the location where people received their drugs changed. Americans increasingly received their drugs from mail order pharmacies (35% increase), clinics (45% increase), and home health care (95% increase). During the same time period, there were decreases in drugs received through independent pharmacies (5% decrease), long term care facilities (17% decrease), and federal facilities (9% decrease). Drug spending is heavily driven by a relatively small number of high-cost products. The cost of specialty drugs has continued to grow, totaling $301 billion in 2021, an increase of 43% since 2016. Specialty drugs represented 50% of total drug spending in 2021. While the majority (80%) of prescriptions that Americans fill are for generic drugs, brand name drugs accounted for 80% of prescription drug spending in both retail and non-retail settings, with little change over time. The top 10% of drugs by price make up fewer than 1% of all prescriptions, but account for 15% of retail spending and 20%-25% of non-retail spending. Prescription drug spending trends have been less affected by the COVID-19 pandemic than health care services. Several provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act address drug pricing, including allowing the Secretary of HHS to negotiate prices in Medicare Parts B and D for selected medications and introducing Medicare rebates for drug prices that rise faster than inflation. These provisions may impact future drug spending trends. Washington, D.C. : Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, Office Of Science and Data Policy September 2022 United States. Department of Health and Human Services. Office of Science and Data Policy, issuing body. Technical Report Text Illustrations 1 online resource (1 PDF file (13 pages)) nlm:nlmuid-9918540086206676-pdf 9918540086206676 http://resource.nlm.nih.gov/9918540086206676 English United States The National Library of Medicine believes this item to be in the public domain. https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0