Blog: Drug costs exceed $100,000 a year for more Americans

The number of patients taking at least $100,000 worth of prescription drugs annually tripled from 2013 to 2014, according to research released this week by pharmacy benefits manager Express Scripts.

High-cost medications for hepatitis C and cancer, as well as the increased use of expensive pharmacy-compounded drugs, were the main factors driving the increase.

Those three types of medications accounted for nearly two-thirds of drug spending by patients whose medication costs exceeded $100,000 in 2014, according to Express Scripts.

The research estimates that the number of Americans with six-figure drug bills jumped from 49,000 to 139,000 from 2013 to 2014. Among this group, 58% were baby-boomers ages 51 to 70.

Other common elements among those with extremely high medication costs:

Insurance plans covered more than 98% of the big bills, paying an average of $156,911 per patient, according to the report, titled "Super Spending, U.S. Trends in High-Cost Medication Use."

The data for the analysis came from de-identified prescription drug claims of 31.5 million insured Americans between 2013 and 2014., including commercially insured, Medicare and Medicaid patients.