Drug bills are higher than need be, but both doctors and senior patients can be too quick to reach for the pill bottle. Busy doctors may not take the time to thoroughly diagnose seniors, finding it quicker to just prescribe another drug. Seniors can be reluctant to give preventive lifestyle changes a serious try, or may not use their prescription drugs properly. Patients are often given prescriptions for expensive new pills when cheaper older ones work just as well.

Because of the tendency to overmedicate, the likelihood of serious side effects and adverse drug reactions in seniors taking multiple prescriptions increases dramatically. Studies estimate that the U.S. wastes an extra dollar for every dollar spent on drugs fixing the problems drugs can cause. An estimated $150 billion is spent each year fixing problems caused by excessive medication. If that amount could be cut to $50 billion says J. Lyle Bootman, dean of the University of Arizona’s college of Pharmacy, “we’d save enough to afford a Medicare drug benefit.”

Drug companies defend prices, saying it allows them to spend more money developing tomorrow’s lifesaving medicines. But questions have been raised as to whether drug companies cross an ethical line when marketing expensive drugs to patients who don’t need them. An earlier study by the NIHCM Foundation found that increases in the sales of 50 drugs most heavily advertised to consumers were responsible for almost half of the $20.8 billion increase in retail spending from 1999 to 2000. 

Sources: “Top Selling Drugs Push Spending Up 17.1% in 2001,” National Institute for Health Care Management Foundation, March 29, 2002. “Drug Prices: What’s Fair?” John Carey and Amy Barrett, “Business Week,” December 10, 2001. “Prescription Drugs and Mass Media Advertising, 2000,” National Institute for Health Care Management, November 2001.

To read more on prescription drugs, click here to read “Do You Really Need That Prescription?”: http://www.tscl.org/NewContent/101195.asp.

September 2002