Health spending expenditures for commercial plans are predominantly concentrated among a small population of high-intensity consumers across settings of care.

Rising health care spending has sparked new efforts to constrain health care expenditures. To explore how health care spending is distributed across consumers and how utilization patterns compare across health care resource expenditures (eg, hospital, outpatient care). Using the IQVIA PharMetrics Plus database, we conducted a retrospective claims analysis for the 2018 plan year to examine commercial health care spending and utilization across 5 settings of care: ambulatory services, inpatient services, office visits, pharmacy services, and additional services.

Reconciling the Seemingly Irreconcilable: How Much Are We Spending on Drugs?

Background: Estimates of drug spending are often central to the public policy debate on how to manage healthcare spending in the United States. Nevertheless, common estimates of prescription drug spending vary substantially by source, which can inhibit productive policy dialogue.

Objectives: To review publicly reported estimates of drug spending and uncover the underlying methodological inputs that drive the substantial variation in estimates of prescription drug spending.

Has The Era Of Slow Growth For Prescription Drug Spending Ended?

In the period 2005-13 the US prescription drug market grew at an average annual pace of only 1.8 percent in real terms on an invoice price basis (that is, in constant dollars and before manufacturers' rebates and discounts). But the growth rate increased dramatically in 2014, when the market expanded by 11.

Orphan Drug Expenditures In The United States: A Historical And Prospective Analysis, 2007-18.

The Orphan Drug Act of 1983 established incentives for the development of drugs that treat rare, or orphan, diseases. We used the IMS Health MIDAS database of audited biopharmaceutical sales to measure US annual spending on orphan drugs in the period 2007-13, and we estimated spending on the drugs for the period 2014-18. We identified 356 brand-name orphan drugs that were approved by the Food and Drug Administration in the period 1983-2013.

Pharmaceutical expenditure on drugs for rare diseases in Canada: a historical (2007-13) and prospective (2014-18) MIDAS sales data analysis.

Background: Health Canada has defined rare diseases as life-threatening, seriously debilitating, or serious chronic conditions affecting a very small number of patients (~1 in 2,000 persons). An estimated 9 % of Canadians suffer from a rare disease. Drugs treating rare diseases (DRDs) are also known as orphan drugs.

Decline in economic returns from new drugs raises questions about sustaining innovations.

The sales and financial returns realized by pharmaceutical companies are a frequent topic of discussion and debate. In this study we analyzed the economic returns for four cohorts of new prescription drugs launched in the United States (in 1991-94, 1995-99, 2000-04, and 2005-09) and compared fluctuations in revenues with changing average research and development (R&D) and other costs to determine patterns in rewards for pharmaceutical innovation. We found that the average present values of lifetime net economic returns were positive and reached a peak with the 1995-99 and 2000-04 new drug cohorts.