Costs of medications drop for the first time in 20 years

Syracuse (WSYR-TV) -- For the first time in 20 years, the cost of medicine for common conditions has gone done.

Cheaper generic drugs in 2012 brought down spending on treatments for high blood pressure and high cholesterol. People who have prescription drug coverage saw the cost of those medicines drop by one and a half percent, but a rise in spending on specialty drug treatments offset that decline and drove total U.S. payments for prescription drugs up 2.7 percent

One drug that won’t be going generic any time soon is Celebrex. U.S. regulators have granted Pfizer, Inc. a reissued patent on its multi-billion dollar pain drug that extends its marketing exclusively until early December 2015.

That will give Pfizer an additional 1.5 years of selling a drug that had U.S. sales of more than $1.7 billion in 2012, before cheaper generic versions begin to hit the market at the end of 2015.