2021 US medicines spending up 12%, boosted by COVID-19 jabs and therapies

The pandemic has wreaked havoc on lives and economies, as well as the cost of healthcare, though benefiting the drugmakers that have pushed through new products to deal with the situation at record speed.

Notable is that spending on medicines in the USA, at estimated net manufacturer prices, reached $407 billion in 2021, up 12% over 2020, as COVID-19 vaccines and therapeutics became widely available and added $29 billion in related spending.

That’s the finding of a new US Medicines Trends 2022 Report, released today by the IQVIA Institute for Human Data Science. In the same year, the non-COVID medicines market grew more slowly, at 5%, from the growing impact of biosimilars, which increased significantly, offsetting increased use of branded medicines.