Did You Know? Medicines Reduce Health Care Costs

Hospital visits, surgeries and long-term care place a heavy burden on our nation's health care system, and the weight is only projected to increase. In just the next decade, the U.S. will spend $13.5 trillion on hospital care, underscoring the importance of investing in new medicines.

Medicines shift the treatment paradigm by slowing, treating and curing diseases to help patients avoid expensive hospital care. In fact, the Congressional Budget Office has even changed its cost estimating methodology to reflect evidence that increased prescription medicine use in Part D leads to offsetting reductions in Medicare spending for other medical services.

• Medicines have helped raise the average U.S. life expectancy from 47 years in 1900 to 78 years.
• Since its peak in 1991, the cancer death rate in the U.S. has fallen 22 percent and 2 of 3 patients diagnosed with cancer live at least 5 years following diagnosis.
• And new hepatitis C therapies have cure rates above 90 percent and dramatically decrease the burden of the disease on the U.S. health care system and the economy.

Medicines can continue to save lives and be part of the solution to reducing medical spending, but only if we have a health care system that supports innovation and encourages the development of new treatments for Alzheimer's disease and other costly conditions.