May 17, 2010
The Wall Street Journal

The AARP says that manufacturer prices for brand-name prescription drugs commonly used by people on Medicare rose 9.7% for the year ending in March — the biggest annual jump since the group started tracking prices in 2002. The price of specialty drugs like biologics and injectables rose 9.2%. Generic drug prices, meantime, dropped 9.7%. (All this happened while general inflation hovered around 0.3%.)

The report found that all of the top 25 brand-name prescription drugs had higher prices in the last year. Here’s a list of the top 10, with manufacturer and percent change in manufacturer’s price:

Nexium – AstraZeneca - 7.4%
Plavix – Bristol-Myers Squibb – 10.5%
Prevacid – Takeda – 8.1%
Protonix – Wyeth – 9.3%
Lipitor (20mg) – Pfizer – 5.5%
Lipitor (10mg) – Pfizer – 5.5%
Aricept – Eisai – 13.9%
Fosamax – Merck – 6.7%
Norvasc — Pfizer — 5.0%
Advair — GlaxoSmithKline — 7.0%
Industry group PhRMA said in a statement that the report was “misleading” because it doesn’t account for “discounts and rebates generally negotiated between drug manufacturers and payers, which can significantly lower the cost of brand-name medicines, ultimately benefiting patients.” The group also said prescription drugs “represent a small and decreasing share of growth in overall health care costs in the U.S.”

This follows a report last month from pharmacy-benefit manager Express Scripts saying brand-name drugs registered a 9.1% price increase last year, with an 11.5% jump for specialty drugs. An Express Scripts exec told the WSJ then that the increases “were exacerbated by the health care reform debate.” Health-care overhaul legislation includes higher rebates manufacturers must pay to Medicaid. Drug makers disputed that notion, the WSJ reported.

Source: http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2010/05/17/brand-name-drug-prices-rose-97-last-year-aarp-says/#.html#