This video is part of our Kite & Key Shorts series — easy to understand ... but hard to forget.
Why are prescription drugs so expensive?
Actually, hang on. Are prescription drugs expensive?
Not always.
In fact, 90% of prescriptions filled in the United States are generic,i and the average patient pays just $8 out-of-pocket for a generic prescription.ii
High prices mainly occur with new, cutting-edge treatments.
One reason? It costs an average of $2.6 billion to develop a single new drug.iii
The good news: even drugs that start out expensive rarely stay that way.
Just one generic competitor can lower prices nearly 40%,iv so the key to lowering drug costs is to get more generic drugs on the market.
One way to do that is to speed up the approval process.
The faster generic drugs get approved, the quicker they hit shelves and bring down prices.
High drug costs can be a real hardship, but we can lower them through competition and still preserve our access to life-saving medicine.
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:
- 90% of prescriptions filled in the U.S. are generic — and the average patient pays only $8 out-of-pocket for them.
- The price of new drugs is high because the average cost of drug development is $2.6 billion.
- The introduction of just one generic competitor can lower drug prices by nearly 40%.
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