Millions of Americans Are Not Taking Medications as Prescribed: Report

Oxycodone pain pills prescribed for a patient with chronic pain. John Moore/Getty Images

Millions of adults in the United States are not taking their medications as prescribed because of rising costs, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

In 2021, most adults ages 18–64 took at least one prescription medication, but more than 8 percent—about 9.2 million people—said they tried to save money by skipping doses, taking less than was prescribed, or delaying a prescription fill, according to the CDC’s National Health Interview Survey.

Americans spend around $1,310 a year on average for prescription drugs—more than any other country—according to the latest available OECD data.

“Although the average price per prescription remained flat between 2020 and 2021, the number of retail prescriptions grew, with out-of-pocket spending for prescription medications increasing by 4.8 percent,” the CDC reported.

More than a third of adults took at least three prescription medications in 2021, according to the CDC.

Delaying or adjusting medications can lead to more serious health implications and raises the potential for even higher costs if additional treatments become necessary.

“The problem with that is if you’re only taking them some of the time or not taking them at all, the underlying condition you’re trying to treat isn’t being treated appropriately, which means that you’re probably going to have more problems with that disease, which actually ends up a lot of times being more costly,” Dr. Gill Wright III, the director of Metro Public Health, told WKRN.

Earlier research found that about one in six people with diabetes were rationing their insulin.

“The main takeaway is that 1.3 million people rationed insulin in the United States, one of the richest countries in the world,” said Dr. Adam Gaffney, a pulmonologist and critical care doctor at Harvard Medical School and Cambridge Health Alliance and lead author of the study. “This is a lifesaving drug. Rationing insulin can have life-threatening consequences.”

The new CDC data shows vast disparities in how often drug costs cause people to not take their medications as prescribed.

Nearly a quarter (23 percent) of adults without health care coverage did not take their medications as prescribed in order to reduce costs, compared with less than 7 percent of people who had private insurance.

Those with disabilities were found to be about three times more likely than those without disabilities to ration their medications. Adults in fair or poor health were also almost three times more likely to do so than those in excellent, very good, or good health.

Additionally, women were found to be more likely to not follow their prescriptions than men.

“Women today still shoulder more of the burden of child care and household management. They may make their own health a lower priority, in the face of financial or time pressures,” Robin Feldman, a pharmaceutical and intellectual property law expert at the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco, told NBC News.

Robin Cohen, a CDC statistician and co-author of the study, noted that the report does not look at what prescriptions people are taking or for what conditions. It also only looked at people who did not adhere to the medications because of the cost.

“So there may be other reasons that people do not take medication as prescribed, but we do not evaluate them,” she said.

CNN Wire contributed to this report.