Wonkblog’s Carolyn Johnson noticed a study published this Friday that reached a rather shocking conclusion: The average annual retail cost of certain specialty pharmaceuticals now exceeds the median U.S. household income. These drugs are used to treat complex diseases such as multiple sclerosis, cancer and rheumatoid arthritis, (emphasis added) according to the Post.
The study, published by AARP Public Policy Institute, illustrates how expensive some specialty drugs have become in just the last two years. They found that roughly 576,000 Americans spent more than the median household income on prescription medications in 2014—up a whopping 63% from 2013. In 2014, the last year for which data is available, median household income was $53,657. The number of patients with costs exceeding $100,000 a year nearly tripled in 2014 to 140,000. In total, the extra cost burden, according to the study, is about $52 billion annually.
Put plainly: certain life-saving drugs are rapidly getting obscenely expensive. Even though most people don’t pay the full retail cost of drugs, as the Washington Post notes, the effects begin to add up:
