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(I have just underlined the key numbers):
Overall U.S.
spending on medicines reached $320 billion in 2011, up 3.7 percent from
2010, according to the report from IMS Health, a healthcare information and
services company. The increase was just 0.5 percent on a per capita basis.
All told, the
industry launched 34 new drugs last year, the most in more than a decade,
according to IMS.
The new
products include hepatitis C drugs Incivek from Vertex Pharmaceuticals and
Victrelis from Merck & Co ; Bristol-Myers Squibb's Yervoy and Roche Holding
AG's and Zelboraf for melanoma; and two medicines for preventing stroke for
patients with irregular heart beats: Boehringer Ingelheim's Pradaxa, and
Xarelto from Johnson & Johnson and Bayer AG.
Spending
last year on brands launched in 2010 and 2011 amounted to $12.2 billion, according to IMS.
Overall spending
on brand-name medicines rose 2.2 percent to about $235 billion. Such
spending was reduced by $14.9 billion because of brand-name products that
lost their patent protection and saw their sales eroded by lower-cost
generic copies. That included Pfizer's blockbuster cholesterol fighter Lipitor,
which lost patent protection in late November.
Generics
now account for about 80 percent of dispensed prescriptions, according to IMS. The
pharmaceutical industry is in the midst of an unprecedented period in which
many of the best-selling medicines are due to lose U.S. patent protection over
the next couple years.
Well, I
have a lot of thoughts concerning these numbers…
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