TRENTON, New Jersey (AP) — Spending on prescription drugs in
the U.S. grew relatively slowly last year as fewer people started new
prescriptions and more prescriptions were filled with cheaper generics, an
industry study shows.

Americans and their insurers spent $307.4 billion on
prescription drugs in 2010, up just 2.3 percent from the previous year. Growth
had already slowed to 5.1 percent in 2009, from as much as 13 percent a year
earlier in the decade.

The study released Tuesday by the IMS Institute for Healthcare
Informatics, an arm of health data firm IMS Health, shows the volume of
prescription medicines that Americans used also increased at historically low
levels.

That’s bad news for brand-name pharmaceutical companies —
but may also be for doctors and patients.

The number of visits to doctors’ offices declined 4.2
percent in 2010, to 1.54 billion, according to the study. That downward trend
began in mid-2009, as the employment rate remained stubbornly high and more
people lost health insurance.

Pharmacies filled 0.5 percent fewer prescriptions in 2010
than in 2009 for pills, capsules and nasal spray medications — about 60 percent
of total spending on medications. For medicines that are injected or infused,
total volume rose even less, just 0.2 percent.

Spending on generic drugs last year’s few growth areas,
driven by patients with no health insurance or financial problems, insurance
company lists of preferred drugs and new generic versions of a number of widely
used drugs. Nearly four in five prescriptions filled last year were for generic
drugs.

“These trends combined to make 2010 the second-lowest
sales growth period ever measured by IMS,” said Michael Kleinrock, the
institute’s director of research development. “The lowest was 2008.”