Soaring prices for the life-saving opioid treatment naloxone are keeping out it out of the hands of uninsured Americans, even as the cost has dropped for those with medical insurance.
A study released Friday by the RAND Corporation found that the average out-of-pocket cost of naloxone for uninsured patients has increased by 500 percent from 2014 to 2018. Yet for those with insurance, the cost decreased by 26 percent.
The average out-of-pocket cost among those without insurance jumped from $27 in 2014 to $250 in 2018, the study found.
Around one-fifth of Americans with opioid-use disorder do not have medical insurance.
“The price of naloxone is almost certainly an impediment to more widespread adoption among the uninsured,” Evan Peet, the study’s lead author and an economist at RAND, a nonprofit research organization, said in a media release.
“Policymakers who want to further expand access to naloxone — particularly among the uninsured and vulnerable — need to pay greater attention to the out of-pocket costs,” Peet added.
For the study, researchers from RAND and the University of Southern California looked at trends in out-of-pocket costs for naloxone by examining more than 700,00 prescription records from 2010 to 2018.
The team found a drastic increase in the number of prescriptions, which increased from 11,432 to more than 386,000 in 2018.
Study authors said policy makers could increase the flow of the life-saving treatment in part by offering subsidies for naloxone purchases, issuing rebates to the uninsured, and by regulating co-pays for those with medical insurance.
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A separate study published earlier in August found that nearly 90 percent of people in the U.S. living with opioid use disorder are not receiving lifesaving medications.
The study, published in the International Journal of Drug Policy, examined the prevalence of opioid use disorder and the use of medications such as buprenorphine and extended-release naltrexone to treat it between 2010 and 2019. Researchers found that 86.6 percent of people are not getting the treatment they need.
A record number of Americans died from drug overdoses in 2021 with data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showing an estimated 107,622 deaths. Overdose deaths involving opioids increased from an estimated 70,029 in 2020 to 80,816 in 2021.
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