This California Unsupported Price Increase final report is based on drugs identified through SB-17, the California drug price transparency law. ICER found that increases in spending for many drugs under the SB-17 law may be primarily due to increased volume rather than increases in net price.

Final Documents

ICER’s Chief Medical Officer David Rind, MD stated:

“Prescription drugs continue to arrive in the US with increasingly high launch prices that are frequently far above a fair alignment with the demonstrated improvement in patients’ lives.

Additionally, we very frequently see year-over-year price increases despite a lack of substantial supporting clinical evidence. We recently received a new grant to develop an unsupported price increase report specific to California. The state’s SB-17 report looks at the most frequently prescribed drugs, the costliest drugs by total annual plan spending, and the drugs with the highest year-over-year increase in total annual plan spending in California.  We found that, because information on volume and changes in net price in California are not available, the increase in spending for many drugs may be primarily, or even entirely, due to increased volume rather than increases in net price.  Thus, drugs with increased utilization can be listed by the state of California even without significant increases in list or net pricing.” 

For questions or additional information, please contact info@icer.org.