Greater prescription drug use, not higher drug prices , has contributed to increased pharmaceutical expenditures. According to IMS data, overall pharmaceutical expenditures in the U.S. increased by 18.8 percent in 1999. Of this increase, only 4.2 percentage points resulted from increased prices. The remaining 14.6 percentage point increase resulted from increased use of pharmaceutical products, coupled with the fact that doctors are now more frequently prescribing newer, innovative, sometimes more expensive medicines that add great value to their patients' health. Increased use of pharmaceuticals often will result in lower overall health care costs for specific diseases such as AIDS, diabetes, asthma, stroke and heart disease.
Medicines keep people out of the hospital, off the surgery table, on the job and in the home.
The medicine chest is filling up and that's good news for patients and their families. The 40 new medicines approved in 1999 push the total of new medicines for the 1990s to 370 - up from 239 in the previous decade. New, innovative medicines have resulted in an increase in sales of pharmaceuticals. Robust sales not only means the industry is doing well, but that patients are doing even better. There are more treatment options than ever before.