Patients in the US with neurological conditions are paying a disproportionate burden in accessing the drug treatments they need, new data suggests.
A report published in the American Academy of Neurology’s Neurology journal points to soaring out-of-pocket drug costs – the additional costs incurred when sourcing prescriptions such as phone calls to suppliers or delivery costs from manufacturers.
For the study, researchers examined costs of drugs for five common neurological diseases from 2012 to 2021 using a large private health care claims database.
It involved 186,144 people with epilepsy, 169,127 with peripheral neuropathy, 60,861 with Alzheimer’s or other dementia, 54,676 with MS and 45,909 with Parkinson’s disease.
MS drugs had the largest increase in costs, with the average out-of-pocket drug cost increasing from US$750 per year in 2012 to US$2,378 per year in 2021 – a 217 per cent rise. All MS drugs had increasing out-of-pocket costs.
Costs have dropped for medications where generic versions have been introduced.
Researcher Amanda Gusovsky, of The Ohio State University in Columbus, said: “In some cases the out-of-pocket cost to patients has increased much more than the total cost of the drug, indicating that patients are taking on a disproportionate amount of the burden of these cost increases.
“In other cases where generic drugs were introduced and the overall costs went down, the out-of-pocket costs to patients did not decrease, so they were not benefiting from these reductions.
“MS medications costs remain exceptionally high and pose a substantial financial burden to people with this devastating disease.
“It’s imperative that we develop policy solutions such as caps on costs, value-based pricing and encouraging production of generic drugs to address this issue.”
The study found that the cost of several drugs for these diseases decreased by 48 per cent to 80 per cent in the years after a generic version of the drug was introduced.
Gusovsky said both neurologists and patients should consider the use of generic or biosimilar drugs where available to control costs.
She noted that previous studies have shown that high costs can create burdens such as medical debt, skipping food or other essentials or not taking drugs as often as prescribed, which can possibly lead to complications and higher costs later.
