Economics of statin therapy

Statins are expensive; that is one of the most common complaints about them and one reason patients stop taking them. Are they too expensive, though? This question becomes less pressing as more of them go “off patent” and less expensive generic brands enter the market. However, it is always worth evaluating whether medicines are cost efficient.

Studies in both the United States back in the late 90s, when all statins were still covered by patents and Italy, which has government supported health care concluded that large-scale use of statins was economically beneficial. The benefits outweighed the costs.

The MBAs who work at the pharmaceutical companies think like this: we should charge what the buyer values the product at, not what it costs. And the long-term value statin usage is undeniably large in some cases. So these MBAs and many economists would conclude that not only should the drug companies charge a high price, but that they almost have a moral obligation to do so. There is also the reasonable explanation that it costs millions of dollars to develop a prescription drug, so they have to charge a high price to recoup the costs, and if corporations weren’t allowed to recover costs, they would never produce valuable drugs.

Use of statins in the United States increased by 156% between 2000 and 2005. While 15.8 million people took statins in 2000, 29.7 million took them in 2005. The number of prescriptions rose from 90 million to 174 million, and the retail spending increased from $7.7 billion to $19.7 billion.

Some interesting research has been done on the racial patterns of statin prescriptions. It is known that differences in health care quantity and even diagnosis exists across ethnic and income groups. A paper presented through the American Society of Health Economics showed that for patients with dyslipidemia and congestive heart disease, that Hispanics were 12 to 15 percent less likely to be prescribed statins, and African Americans were 7 percent less likely to get a statin prescription. Doctors in the Northeastern United States prescribe statins more often than doctors in the rest of the country. Both Medicare and Medicaid pay for statin medicines and generic statins are inexpensive enough that health insurance companies rarely object. People who use health savings accounts can use the money in those accounts to pay for statins.

Tbe British National Health System revised its guidelines in mid 2008 and now recommends expanded use of statins.