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As reported in the New York Times, a study published last month in The New England Journal of Medicine suggests that “seemingly generous” coupons for expensive medications may actually lead to higher drug costs for everyone. Not only are patients more likely to continue using more expensive brand name drugs, researchers found that “when drug companies offered a coupon for the brand-name version, more patients stuck with the more expensive brand-name drug, and the company raised the prices on such drugs faster than it did for drugs for which no coupon was available.” As a result, “the researchers estimate that coupons for 23 such drugs with a generic alternative resulted in an extra $700 million to $2.7 billion in spending on drugs over five years.” The article also mentions a study with similar conclusions was published by the National Bureau of Economic Research in late October.
