Drug spending in 2015 climbed for the second year in a row, with spending on pharmaceuticals reaching $424 billion, a new analysis finds.
The analysis from research firm IMS Health released Tuesday comes as Americans are concerned about the increases in the prices of pharmaceuticals.
The $424 billion figure is a 12.5 percent increase over 2014 figures. After adjusting for rebates and other price discounts from manufacturers, the net spending was $310 billion, an 8.5 percent hike from 2014, the report found.
The firm pegged the increases on new medicines.
“The surge of new medicines remained strong and the use of recently launched brands remained at historically high levels, while the savings from brands facing generic competition were relatively low,” the report said.
Driving much of the increase is spending on specialty drugs that treat serious ailments such as hepatitis and cancer. Spending on those drugs reached $121 billion in 2015, up by more than 15 percent from 2014.
Spending on those drugs doubled in the last five years and contributed 70 percent of the overall medicine spending growth from 2010 to 2015, IMS said.
The main conditions were treatments for hepatitis, autoimmune diseases and oncology.
The pharmaceutical industry pointed to different parts of the analysis. For instance, the analysis found that net prices for brand name drugs increased by nearly 3 percent in 2015, down from a 5.1 percent increase the year before.
“This is yet another report confirming how the competitive biopharmaceutical market works to control costs,” said the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, a top lobbying group.
Several polls have found that high drug costs are a top concern for Americans. Presidential candidates on both sides of the aisle have pushed for changes to address high prices, including allowing Medicare the power to negotiate for lower prices.
