Prescription drug prices may be rising, but a new analysis suggests just not as fast as before.
Price hikes for brand-name drugs in this year’s second quarter were 7.1 percent. This obviously exceeds inflation and may have crimped some wallets, but this is below the 9.7 percent hikes that occurred in the same period a year earlier, according to SSR Research, which tracks the pharmaceutical industry.
Moreover, after accounting for rebates paid by drug makers to pharmacy benefit managers — the middlemen that negotiate prices and determine preferred insurance coverage — prices rose 1.3 percent. And this was below the 3.7 percent seen in last year’s second quarter.
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