Tough Times

Yes, the economy sucks. The real estate market has tanked, unemployment runs rampant, and things are tough all over – except, perhaps, in the pharmaceutical industry.

According to IMS health, a pharmaceutical information and consulting firm, sales of prescription medicines worldwide rose 7% to $602 billion in 2009. 7% annual growth is spectacular in the best of economies – pulling off this kind of growth during a worldwide recession is beyond remarkable. This is not as rosy of a picture as you might think. Here in the USA, growth was ‘only’ a pitiful 5.7%. Luckily, the slack was more then taken up by emerging markets like China, Russia, South Korea and Mexico. In those countries, pharmaceutical sales skyrocketed by 81% last year. Who says that there’s a recession?



Here are some interesting facts about these statistics. Prescription drug sales in the US in 2009 were $252 Billion dollars. This translates to just under 42% of the worldwide total sales. This 42% of worldwide sales comes from a country that comprises only 5% of the worldwide population. Which means that, here in the USA, we are paying, per capita, over 8 times more on prescription medicines than the rest of the world on the whole.

Based on a population figure of roughly 307 million people, this means that we are spending, roughly, $850 per person, per year, on our prescription medicines. This includes all the young healthy people who rarely need a prescription (remember those carefree days?). It also includes all those people who are lucky enough to use those $10-for-a-90-day-supply generics.

Unfortunately, we’ve all become immune to large numbers from watching CSPAN, so here’s some much needed perspective. The $252 Billion dollars in US sales are almost 10 times the annual budget of the entire State of New Jersey. The $602 Billion in Worldwide sales approaches 90% of the US military budget – and we’re fighting 2 wars with that money.

Well, there is some good news in all of this. If these financial statistics make you feel nauseous or lose sleep, they have pills for that now. They’ll only run you around $300 a month.


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