(CNN) — Millions of adults in the United States do not take their medications as prescribed due to high costs, says a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC, for its acronym in English).
Most adults ages 18 to 64 took at least one prescription drug in 2021. But more than 8% of them (about 9.2 million people) said they tried to save money by skipping doses, taking less than what prescribed or delaying a prescription fill, according to CDC data.
While average drug costs didn’t rise in 2021, the number of prescriptions did, and that pushed up spending. More than a third of adults took at least three prescription drugs in 2021, according to the CDC. And data from health analytics company IQVIA shows total prescription drug costs rose nearly 5% from 2020 to 2020, to $63 billion.
Delaying or adjusting medications can have serious health consequences and raises the possibility of even higher costs if additional treatments are required.
Previous research found that about 1 in 6 people with diabetes were rationing their insulin.
“The bottom line is that 1.3 million people rationed insulin in the United States, one of the richest countries in the world,” said Dr. Adam Gaffney, a pulmonologist and intensive care physician at Harvard Medical School and Cambridge Health Alliance and lead author of that study. “This is a life-saving medicine. Rationing insulin can have life-threatening consequences.”
New data from the CDC shows wide disparities in how often drug costs keep people from taking their medications as prescribed.
Nearly a quarter (23%) of adults without health care coverage did not take their medications as prescribed to reduce costs, compared to less than 7% of people with private insurance.
Those living with disabilities were also about three times as likely as those without disabilities to ration their medications, as were people in fair or poor health compared with those in good health.
Women were also more likely than men, according to CDC data.
For this report, researchers at the National Center for Health Statistics analyzed responses to the 2021 National Health Interview Survey, a representative survey of American households.
