Healthy Skepticism Library item: 1335

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Publication type: news

Hallam K.
Seniors' Drug Prices Outpace Inflation, Report Says
Bloomberg News 2003 Jul 9

Full text:

The prices of the 50 most-prescribed drugs for the elderly climbed an average of three times the rate of inflation last year, including Merck & Co. and Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. medicines, according to a Families USA report. The price of Merck’s Zocor cholesterol drug jumped 10 percent, compared with 2.4 percent growth in inflation last year, said the report from the consumer advocacy group. The cost of Bristol-Myers’s Plavix heart treatment climbed 6.9 percent. A quarter of the medications’ prices held steady, including the cost of AstraZeneca Plc’s Prilosec heartburn treatment.

The House and the Senate this week are setting up negotiations to reconcile their bills overhauling Medicare, the federal health insurance program for the elderly and disabled.

Medicare pays for medicines doctors administer. The legislation would require Medicare to help patients, a third of whom have no other drug insurance, pay for other prescriptions.

“The skyrocketing cost of prescription drugs has tarnished the golden years of many millions of our senior citizens,’‘ Senator Edward Kennedy said at a press conference in Washington.

“We have the greatest opportunity in a generation to pass a prescription-drug benefit if the president and members of both parties come together for the good of our retirees.’‘

Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat, is the architect of the bipartisan Senate bill.

Pfizer Inc.‘s Lipitor cholesterol medicine and its Norvasc medication for high blood pressure top the list of treatments most- often prescribed for the elderly, followed by Merck’s Fosamax, Plavix and Prilosec, according to the report, which was compiled by the Prime Institute at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.

Shares of Merck fell 3.7 percent last year, while Bristol- Myers’s shares lost more than half their value and Pfizer’s stock dove 23 percent, compared with a 22 percent drop in the Standard and Poor’s 500 Pharmaceuticals Index. Shares of the U.K.‘s AstraZeneca dropped 28 percent.