Unsubstantiated price hikes drove US drug spending up $805 million in 2021-report

Price increases spread among seven of the 10 drugs in 2021 behind an $805 million increase in the US spending from the prior year were not supported by clinical evidence, an influential US pricing research firm said recently.

The Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER) said the spending increase in 2021 was still less than the $1.67 billion rise in the previous year. This is the third year the group has looked at the top 250 drugs by spending and assessed if those driving the US spending increases were justified.

“Last year, a huge part of the (increase in) spending was all one drug…in this year, we saw the increase was more spread out across different drugs,” according to David Rind, Chief Medical Officer, ICER.

In 2020, Abbvie’s rheumatoid arthritis therapy Humira led to an almost $1.4 billion increase in the US drug spending, accounting for over 80 per cent of the total increase.

Rind said Humira dropped off the 10 costliest prescription drug list as its net price hike was lower in 2021. Since there was no single drug which drove the increase in spending this year, the rise is also relatively smaller compared to 2020, he added.

Bausch Health’s Xifaxan, an antibiotic drug for traveller’s diarrhoea, led to an increase of nearly $175 million in spending, among the highest this year.

Johnson & Johnson’s schizophrenia therapy Invega Sustenna and Amgen’s osteoporosis drug Prolia followed closely with spending increases of $170 million and $124 million, respectively.

Edits by EP News Bureau