Strong Medicine: The Cost of Prescription Drugs

Are prescription drugs expensive? Sometimes. But high prices mainly occur with new, cutting-edge treatments. Once a generic competitor hits the market, prices plummet.

In fact, 90% of prescriptions filled in the United States are generic, and the average patient pays just $8 out-of-pocket for a generic prescription.

So, even if a drug comes to market at a high price, it will often fall over time. And the reason for those high prices: Pharmaceutical companies spend billions researching, testing, and eventually producing their medications. It costs an average of $2.6 billion to develop a single new drug.

High drug costs can be a real hardship, but we can lower them through competition—and still preserve our access to life-saving medicine.

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[michaelsorensen]

"average patient pays $8 out of pocket"

Is that on top of insurance? Cause that sounds like on top of insurance.