New study points to a dou­ble-dig­it hike in brand­ed drug prices, spot­light­ing a grow­ing na­tion­al de­bate

Over the last few months we’ve seen a string of big and small bio­phar­ma com­pa­nies make pub­lic pledges to keep their an­nu­al drug price hikes lim­it­ed to mod­est an­nu­al in­creas­es. But look­ing back over 2016, one gauge of drug price in­fla­tion high­lights that the trends all point to on­ly a mod­est “soft­en­ing” of the hard price spikes the US has been see­ing for years now.

Based on their analy­sis of bil­lions of pre­scrip­tions writ­ten last year, Tru­veris says that the drug in­fla­tion rate hit 8.77% last year. Sin­gling out brand­ed drugs, the in­crease was a painful 13%. Gener­ic drugs con­tin­ued to hold the line, with on­ly a frac­tion­al in­crease over­all.

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