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 14.7 percent in 2000. Of this increase, only 3.9 percentage points resulted from increased prices. The remaining 10.8 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.
No other industry from electronics to telecommunications commits a higher percentage of its sales to new innovation and future advances. The medicine chest is filling up and that s good news for patients and their families. More than thirty new medicines were approved in 2000. The 1990s brought 370 new medicines to patients up from 233 in the previous decade. New, innovative medicines have resulted in an increase in sales of pharmaceuticals.