title: The pills that ate your profits.
abstract: It pays to pay attention to drug costs, as prescription outlays rise as much as 20 percent a year at many health plans. Despite a wave of direct-to-consumer ads for pricey new meds, HMOs are fighting back by cutting the number of drugs they'll pay for and hiking copays, among other strategies.
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Meyer
mesh_terms: D000329:Advertising; D003363:Cost Control / Q000379:methods; D017047:Cost Sharing; D016527:Drug Costs; D004345:Drug Industry; D004363:Drug Utilization / Q000191:economics / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D005569:Formularies as Topic; D006279:Health Maintenance Organizations / Q000191:economics*; D006801:Humans; D007356:Insurance, Pharmaceutical Services; D010818:Practice Patterns, Physicians' / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D014481:United States