The Kaiser Family Foundation recently polled Americans for their views on prescription drug prices. Here’s what they learned:
What proportion of the US population takes prescription drugs?
- Most Americans–62 percent–take at least one prescription drug.
- One in four Americans take at least four prescription drugs.
- More than eight in 10 (83 percent) Americans say prescription drug costs are unreasonable.
- Nearly seven in 10 (69 percent) Americans who take prescription drugs say that they have no trouble affording them.
Are prescription drugs affordable?
A recent report in NBER found that thousands of people with Medicare die of stroke, heart attacks and other diagnoses each year because they stop filling their prescriptions when the copays rise as little as $10.40.
- Affordability of prescription drugs is harder for people who are taking four or more medicines.
- Nearly one in three people (32 percent) who take four or more medicines struggle to pay for their prescription drugs.
- Only about 2o percent of people who take up to three prescriptions struggle to pay for them.
- At least a third of people with yearly incomes under $40,000 (35 percent) and people with chronic conditions (33 percent) also have more difficulty affording their prescription drugs.
- One in five people over 65 (2o percent) say they struggle to afford their prescription drugs.
How many people do not fill their prescriptions because of the cost?
- Three in ten people did not fill all their prescriptions in the last year, as a result of the cost.
- One in six (16 percent) did not fill a prescription for a specific drug because of the cost.
- More than one in five (22 percent) substituted a non-prescription drug for their prescription.
- More than one in eight (13 percent) cut their pills in half or skipped doses.
Do people understand that drug company profits are the largest reason for high costs in the US?
- The overwhelming majority of the public (82 percent) understands that pharmaceutical company profits are the largest reason drug prices are so high.
- Nearly seven in ten people (68 percent) wrongly believe that research and development costs are responsible for high drug prices.
- More than half of people (52 percent) mistakenly think that marketing and advertising drive drug prices as high as they are.
Most Americans would like to see more drug price regulation, including a majority of Democrats, Republicans and Independents.
What drug price proposals do Americans favor?
- Nearly nine in ten Americans (88 percent) would like it to be easier for generics to come to market.
- Nearly nine in ten Americans (88 percent) would like Congress to limit drug price increases to the rate of inflation (which does nothing to keep the launch price of a drug reasonable.)
- Eighty-five percent would like Medicare to limit out-of-pocket drug costs (which does nothing to lower drug costs, gives drug companies greater freedom to raise prices since people don’t directly feel the increase, and allows insurers to shift drug costs to everyone through higher premiums and other out-of-pocket costs.)
- More than eight in ten Americans (83 percent) would like the government to regulate drug prices.
- Nearly eight in ten Americans (78 percent) support legalizing drug imports from Canada (though there is no reason not to open the borders to drugs from verified pharmacies around the world.)
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