Drug launch prices topped $250,000 in 2025
By: Lisa Henderson | Original Article
New ICER-West Health data show access gaps persist for patients.
The Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER) and West Health, both non-profits in the healthcare space, released their joint Launch Price and Access Report. With data from IPD Analytics and IQVIA, as well as the National Health Council that collaborated on patient engagement, the second annual analysis examines launch prices and patient access for new FDA-approved treatments.
This report focused on “net price” — the actual amount paid after rebates and discounts — since the authors noted this is more relevant to policymakers than “list price,” which often doesn’t reflect what’s actually paid.
The key findings from this report include:
Median drug launch prices continue to exceed $250,000 per year.
This is up 35%, from $190,000 in 2022 to $257,000 in 2025 (adjusted for inflation). This price decreased slightly, by 2%, between 2024 and 2025, but remains at historically high levels.
About one in four drugs introduced in 2025 had an annual net price exceeding $500,000, while an additional 34% were launched at prices between $200,000 and $500,000.
Only one-third of outpatient prescriptions were filled within 30 days of attempting to fill them during the first year post-approval. A significant proportion of prescriptions were rejected due to non-coverage, likely due to new-to-market blocks, according to the authors.
The report featured a summary of adjudication for new-to-brand outpatient pharmacy prescriptions, which highlights the aggregated statistic above. When broken down, the report shows of those 51% of commercial patients have their prescriptions filled, versus 20% for Medicare and 42% for Medicaid. Non-coverage rejections hover at 24% for commercial versus 58% for Medicare and 20% for Medicaid. Prior authorization and step therapy rejections are 7%, 4% and 24%, respectively.
The data also showed that the proportion of prescription claims that were approved by insurance and dispensed by the pharmacy but not picked up by the patients was 10% for commercial patients, 15% for Medicare patients and 5% for Medicaid.
The report also details launch prices for the 47 drug products approved in 2025 that were included in the analysis. Of those, 55% were orphan drugs, 11% were ultra-rare; non-oncology, and 83% were approved first in the US.
