A recent study from The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) examined 61 hospitals using data made public under new requirements from a recent price transparency regulation. The researchers found hospitals, on average, mark up medicines for commercial insurers by more than double the price they paid to acquire them. Put simply, this means hospitals may earn more revenue on medicines than even the biopharmaceutical companies that developed them. This also leads to higher out-of-pocket costs for many patients. The study reinforces what the Berkeley Research Group found earlier this year: more than half of every dollar spent on medicines goes to someone who doesn’t make them.
