The Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) has been directed to submit a drug pricing report containing information requested by the House Committee on Appropriations. In response, the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) developed this report containing data and analyses related to prescription drug spending between 2006 and 2017 as well as on prescription drugs benefiting from public funding for biomedical research since 2013
The sections on prescription drug spending provide comparative gross prescription drug spending and prices as well as the top 10 highest-cost drugs and the top 10 most frequently prescribed drugs for each of the following: (1) The Medicare program under part B; (2) The Medicare prescription drug program under part D; (3) The Medicaid program. The section on public funding for biomedical research provides the list of drugs that have been approved for sale by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the past five years that have benefited significantly from government grants or research subsidies in either the pre-clinical or clinical stages of development, as well as spending in Medicare and Medicaid for each of those drugs.