For which drugs does Medicare spend the most money? For which inpatient hospital treatments does Medicare have the highest expenses. CMS’s new Dashboards provide an easy to use source to access these high level summary statistics. You can find this information here:
- Medicare Inpatient Hospital Dashboard (website, description)
- Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit Dashboard (website, description)
For instance, some results from the Prescription Drug Benefit Dashboard include:
| Drug Class | 2008 Drug Cost ($) |
| ANTIHYPERLIPIDEMICS | $6,165,831,884 |
| ANTIPSYCHOTICS/ANTIMANIC AGENTS | $5,698,011,103 |
| ANTIDIABETICS | $4,688,777,238 |
| ULCER DRUGS | $4,411,792,980 |
| ANTIHYPERTENSIVES | $4,177,531,157 |
| ANTIASTHMATIC AND BRONCHODILATOR AGENTS | $3,598,966,726 |
| ANTICONVULSANTS | $3,288,116,849 |
| PSYCHOTHERAPEUTIC AND NEUROLOGICAL AGENTS – MISC. | $3,112,790,209 |
| ANTIDEPRESSANTS | $2,835,474,451 |
| ANALGESICS – OPIOID | $2,578,161,329 |
| Drug Class | 2008 Drug Cost ($) |
| LIPITOR | $2,397,843,000 |
| PLAVIX | $2,305,145,585 |
| NEXIUM | $1,487,052,730 |
| SEROQUEL | $1,462,338,499 |
| ARICEPT | $1,326,144,339 |
| ZYPREXA | $1,229,061,198 |
| ADVAIR DISKUS | $1,213,298,009 |
| ACTOS | $1,062,975,107 |
| PREVACID | $848,394,558 |
| ABILIFY | $837,090,968 |
More publicly available government statistics can also be found at Data.gov.
Does anyone know what is happening to Septicemia? Is it incidence, unit costs, both? The costs have been going up a lot–any insight would be appreciated!