• Posted December 10, 2024

1 in 6 U.S. Adults With Asthma Can't Afford Meds

Over 3 million Americans with asthma can't afford to take their medications as prescribed, a new poll estimates.

In total, about 1 in 6 folks with asthma are struggling to cover the costs of inhalers and other medications, according to survey results published Dec. 9 in the journal Thorax.

The findings are troubling because people who skip asthma meds "are at increased risk of asthma-related adverse events, including asthma attacks and ER visits," noted a team of Taiwanese researchers led by Dr. Chung-Hsuen Wu, of Taipei Medical University.

As the researchers noted, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention currently estimates that over 20 million American adults -- 8% of the adult population -- have asthma.

But how many are getting proper treatment?

To find out, Wu and colleagues tracked data from major U.S. federal health surveys for 2011 through 2022.

Among other questions, people with asthma were asked if cost had caused them to skip or delay their asthma treatment over the past month, or if they had consciously lowered the dosage of medicine they used due to cost.

They were also asked about the frequency of asthma attacks and ER visits linked to the breathing disorder.

All told, about 18% of respondents said high cost had caused them to forgo some level of recommended asthma care.

This could mean that, due to pricing, close to 2 million adults with asthma are now skipping their meds and/or lowering drug doses, while about 2.5 million are delaying getting prescriptions filled, the researchers calculated.

However, the research also showed that doing any of the above nearly doubled the odds for asthma attacks and upped the odds for an asthma-linked ER visit by 60%.

There was one glimmer of good news: The percentage of folks who cannot afford their asthma meds has declined with time, from 23% in 2011 to about 13% by 2022.

The decline may be due to the advent of the Affordable Care Act, introduced in 2010, and the expansion of Medicaid.

“With fewer barriers to accessing healthcare, including medications, patients may be more willing to fill prescriptions for medications to control their asthma than before,” the researchers suggested.

Emily Graul and Dr. Christer Janson of, respectively, Emory University in Atlanta and Uppsala University in Sweden, commented on the new findings in an accompanying editorial.

They pointed to one more federal government initiative that might bring down the cost of asthma drugs.

The Biden Administration's recent Inflation Reduction Act has allowed Medicare to lower drug costs for many chronic conditions, "but so far this has not included drugs for respiratory conditions, including asthma," Graul and Janson noted. “The results of this study beg the question: should certain asthma medications be part of the next batch of drug negotiations?”

More information

Find out more about how asthma is treated at the Mayo Clinic.

SOURCE: Thorax, news release, Dec. 9, 2024