While the rising cost of prescription drugs has slowed over the years, it’s likely to increase at a faster pace in the future.
In an Economic Club of Canada speech in Toronto on Thursday, Express Scripts Canada president Michael Biskey said drugs coming off patent and cost reforms have helped keep costs from rising further.
However, 64% of drugs in the pipeline are specialty drugs, and that’s expected to drive future increases in drug spending.
He projects that the spending on specialty drugs will jump to between 25% and 30% by 2017. That’s up from 22% of total drug spending last year.
Biskey added that the only way to reduce costs is by cutting non-adherence, channel waste (using higher-priced delivery methods) and drug mix waste (using higher-priced drugs when clinically equivalent alternatives exist).
He said that the generic fill rate in Canada is just 55% compared with 80% in the United States.
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