Statins Cost Four Times More in US than UK

The cost of statins in the US is radically higher than the costs paid for the same brands in the UK. Statin costs were as much as 400% higher in the US than in the UK. Statins are prescribed in far greater numbers in the US. Thirty-three percent of Americans were prescribed a statin as compared with 24% in British subjects. While the lowest-priced statin in the US at the time of the survey showed that generic lovastatin, cost $313 per year, the lowest-priced statin in the UK, generic simvastatin, cost just $164. At the high end, nongeneric simvastatin in the US cost $1428 per patient per year, while the top-priced statin in Britain was nongeneric atorvastatin, which cost $509 per patient per year. For brand-name drugs available in both countries, however, American costs were double the British costs for both atorvastatin ($997 vs $509) and rosuvastatin ($903 vs $467), while the cost of fluvastatin was nearly three times higher in the US than in the UK ($763 vs $258). January 2012 issue of Pharmacotherapy.