The price of staying alive should not feel like a luxury upgrade. Yet across the United States, families with steady jobs, solid insurance, and carefully planned budgets now stare at pharmacy counters in disbelief as familiar medications ring up at shocking prices. These are not experimental treatments or rare specialty drugs. These are blood pressure pills, insulin, asthma inhalers, antidepressants—medications people have relied on for years to function, to work, to raise kids, to live.
Prescription drug spending in the U.S. has climbed steadily over the past decade, reaching hundreds of billions of dollars annually. People who have taken the same medication for a decade suddenly hear that their plan no longer covers it at the same level, or at all. The solution? Switch to something else.
