Tracking Costs of Common Drugs in the US Market

In a recent article, the authors discuss drug-pricing trends in medications. They restricted their study to brand-name medications used to treat chronic disease. One notable finding was the AWP (average wholesale price) across medications within each of the 5 classes. The authors note that such a study is timely as several medications for chronic disease have recently come to market in the US.

The authors note, “This cross-sectional study found high correlations between AWPs among drugs within 5 classes used to treat chronic conditions that had multiple brand-name medications on the market contemporaneously from 2015 to 2020. Moreover, the median CAGR in costs for each of these medication classes outpaced annual growth rate of the consumer price index for prescription drugs at 2.1% over the same time period.” Read the article here.

(Source: Liu et al., JAMA Network, 1/22/21)