CMS NEWS

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 19, 2019

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CMS Releases Enhanced Drug Dashboards Updated with Data for 2018Dashboards continue agency’s efforts to increase price transparency and lower drug prices

Today, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released new 2018 data and significantly enhanced its Drug Spending Dashboards in the most comprehensive update of the consumer tools to date. As part of the update, the Dashboards now list prescription drugs in their first year on the market (in this case, drugs that were new in 2018). Under the previous methodology, it would take two years for a new drug to appear in the dashboard. This release also enacts changes that President Trump proposed in his budget by including information on prescription drug units that were paid for in Medicare Part B, but discarded. The update advances the agency’s efforts to increase price transparency, lower drug prices, and strengthen the Medicare program to make it sustainable for future generations.

“The Trump Administration’s commitments to price transparency and reducing the costs of prescription drugs are historic,” said CMS Administrator Seema Verma. “The continued public release of what Medicare and Medicaid pay for prescription drugs puts manufacturers on notice: the public is watching what you are charging patients. Accountability – the consequence of greater transparency in drug pricing – is an important component of the Trump Administration’s efforts to lower prices and empower patients with the information they need to make informed decisions.”

All of the information in the Drug Dashboards is presented in an interactive web-based tool, so researchers and consumers can easily sort the data to identify trends. The dashboards focus on average spending per dosage unit (unit price) for prescription drugs paid under Medicare Parts B and D and Medicaid, and track the change in average spending per dosage unit over time. The dashboards also display the manufacturer(s) of each drug as well as information on drug uses and clinical indications. In addition to more comprehensive data, this update to the dashboard includes adding new flags that will help users identify potential data quality issues. The flags highlight values that are based on potentially anomalous data as outliers, so that users can exercise caution when interpreting these results.

The information released today builds on the agency’s efforts to increase price transparency, lower prescription drug list prices and prevent drug wastage. In 2017, CMS began requiring all providers submitting Medicare Part B drugs claims to report any discarded amount of a single use vial or other single-use, packaged drug. In response to concerns regarding prescription drug wastage, the FY2020 President’s Budget called for CMS to publically report data on discarded drug units gathered from this new claims-based reporting process. The report released by CMS today aligns with the President’s Budget and contains a list of Part B drugs that have the highest percentage of discarded units, potentially due to manufacturers only making available a limited number of packaging sizes for these products. In 2018, spending on discarded drug units equaled $725 million, approximately 2% of total Part B drug spending.

In 2018, total gross spending on prescription drugs was $168.1 billion in Medicare Part D, $33.3 billion in Medicare Part B, and $66.4 billion in Medicaid. The proportion of prescription drugs with a unit price increase went down from 2017 to 2018 in both the Medicare Part B program and Medicaid. In the Medicare Part D program, the proportion of prescription drugs with a unit price increase remained steady from 2017 to 2018. However, in Medicare Parts B and D and in Medicaid, the proportion of prescription drugs with unit price increases of 10% or more dropped from 2017 to 2018.

The CMS Drug Spending Dashboards can be accessed at: https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trends-and-Reports/Information-on-Prescription-Drugs/index.html.