Amanda Gusovsky, PhD, post-doctoral scholar at The Ohio State College of Medicine’s CATALYST, The Center for the Advancement of Team Science, Analytics, and Systems Thinking.
Newswise — COLUMBUS, Ohio – Out-of-pocket costs continue to increase for patients who must buy commonly prescribed drugs to treat these five neurological diseases – epilepsy, multiple sclerosis (MS), peripheral neuropathy, Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease. This is according to research published online in Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
Researchers at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and College of Medicine studied the costs of drugs for five common neurological diseases from 2012 to 2021 using a large private health care claims database.
The study involved 186,144 people with epilepsy, 169,127 with peripheral neuropathy, 60,861 with Alzheimer’s or other dementia, 54,676 with MS and 45,909 with Parkinson’s disease.
“We found that the out-of-pocket costs for MS medications increased each year, by 217% on average,” said study first author Amanda Gusovsky, PhD, post-doctoral scholar at The Ohio State College of Medicine’s CATALYST, The Center for the Advancement of Team Science, Analytics, and Systems Thinking.
MS drugs increased the most, with the average out-of-pocket drug cost jumping from $750 per year in 2012 to $2,378 per year in 2021. All MS drugs had increasing out-of-pocket costs.
Earlier studies have shown that when patients can’t afford their medications, they are faced with the decision to either skip eating or skip taking the medications as often as prescribed, leading to other medical problems later.
Branded epilepsy medications had higher out-of-pocket costs than generics, the study found. However, costs dropped when generic versions of drugs were introduced.
Decreases ranging from 48% to 80% in annual out-of-pocket costs of the epilepsy medications duloxetine, pregabalin, rasagiline, rivastigmine and memantine were observed in the years after generic introduction.
“We saw striking cost declines in medications with generic introductions,” study senior author James Burke, MD, a neurologist and professor of neurology at Ohio State. “Our findings emphasize why it’s so important for neurologists to be aware generics and biosimilars for cost control and to maximize affordability, particularly for patients in high deductible health care plans.”
One noted limitation of the study is that the data represents billed charges, which are an estimate of actual costs.
The authors report no relevant disclosures.
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