SUMMARY: Curious about drug pricing? Here’s the link to Medicare drug pricing files for 2014. This is important because prescription prices can vary widely. The price Medicare reimburses is the closest thing in this marketplace to a fixed or benchmark price. Read more on the next page…
How much do prescriptions cost?
We’ve had a lot of conversation lately about how drug prices can vary by a lot — here’s one recent blog post. What’s an individual to do? Well, we always suggest starting off with as much information as you can get. And one of the best sources for pricing is the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which reimburses providers by a series of tables that produce a price that’s useful as a benchmark.
This downloadable spreadsheet comes from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services site.
“The files below contain the payment amounts that will be used to pay for Part B covered drugs for the first quarter of 2014.
“Comparing the first quarter 2014 payment amounts with previous quarters reveals that, for the most part, average drug prices in the market remain relatively stable. On average, prices for the top Part B drugs decreased by 1.4 percent.
“For most of the higher volume drugs (30 out of the top 50), the prices changed 2 percent or less. Overall, the prices for 18 of the top 50 drugs decreased, while two remained the same. In general, among the top drugs with a decrease, there are a number of competitive market factors at work – multiple manufacturers, alternative therapies, new products, recent generic entrants, or market shifts to lower priced products.
