WASHINGTON, May 2 (UPI) -- Medicaid spending on outpatient drugs more than doubled in a five-year period, a federal agency said Tuesday.
Medicaid outlays for outpatient prescription drugs jumped an average of 20 percent per year from 1997 to 2002, rising from $11.6 billion to $23.7 billion in that time period, said a study by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
The agency blamed the five-year spending spike on a rise in the number of prescriptions overall and rapidly growing spending on behalf of disabled adults, including the low-income mentally ill.
The spending increase reflects a rise in both the number of prescriptions written for Medicaid enrollees -- which climbed from 301 million in 1997 to 429 million in 2002 -- and the rapid uptake of newer, and usually costlier, classes of drugs, AHRQ said.
Those newer drug classes included anti-depressants, COX-2 inhibitors, proton pump inhibitors and cholesterol-lowering medications.
In fact, the number of Medicaid enrollees taking anti-depressants rose by 50 percent -- jumping from 2.5 million enrollees in 1997 to 3.7 million in 2002 -- which helped drive a staggering 130-percent rise in Medicaid spending for those drugs during the period studied.
Anti-depressants and all other psychotherapeutic drugs made up the largest category of drugs prescribed to Medicaid enrollees in 2002, with total spending for all drugs in that class skyrocketing 127 percent between 1997 and 2002, AHRQ said.
