The study found that despite an increase in the armamentarium of drugs to treat multiple sclerosis, the cost of the drugs has skyrocketed and not dropped.
A new study shows an "alarming rise" over the last 20 years in the costs of drugs used to slow the progression of multiple sclerosis or reduce the frequency of attacks, according to a study led by researchers at Oregon Health & Science University and Oregon State University.
A substantial increase in the number of MS drugs in the marketplace over the past 20 years, paradoxically, did not lead to lower or stabilized costs for patients who use those drugs. Researchers found the costs of all drugs used to treat MS
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including first-generation therapies
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skyrocketed. Their work is published in the May 26, 2015, issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The costs of MS drugs accelerated at rates 5 to 7 times higher than prescription drug inflation and substantially higher than rates for drugs in a similar class between 1993 and 2013, the researchers report. Drug costs for several MS agents rose on average 20 to 30% per year over this time period.
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Managed Care Reflections: A Q&A With A. Mark Fendrick, MD, and Michael E. Chernew, PhD
December 2nd 2025To mark the 30th anniversary of The American Journal of Managed Care (AJMC), each issue in 2025 includes a special feature: reflections from a thought leader on what has changed—and what has not—over the past 3 decades and what’s next for managed care. The December issue features a conversation with AJMC Co–Editors in Chief A. Mark Fendrick, MD, director of the Center for Value-Based Insurance Design and a professor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor; and Michael E. Chernew, PhD, the Leonard D. Schaeffer Professor of Health Care Policy and the director of the Healthcare Markets and Regulation Lab at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts.
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