A retiree filling a brand-name prescription for a blood thinner, a diabetes drug, or a cancer therapy is paying close to twice what the same medication cost four years ago. That is the central finding of AARP’s latest Rx Price Watch report, which tracked list-price changes for 10 of the most widely used medications in Medicare Part D and found increases ranging from roughly 90% to more than 100% between 2020 and 2024. Over that same stretch, general consumer inflation totaled about 21%.

Put differently, these drugs got expensive at nearly five times the rate of groceries, gasoline, and rent.

The 10 drugs and what they treat

The medications AARP flagged are not obscure specialty products. They are mainstays of American medicine, prescribed to millions of Medicare beneficiaries every year:

• Eliquis (apixaban) – blood clot prevention
• Xarelto (rivaroxaban) – blood clot prevention
• Jardiance (empagliflozin) – type 2 diabetes and heart failure
• Ozempic (semaglutide) – type 2 diabetes
• Entresto (sacubitril/valsartan) – heart failure
• Stelara (ustekinumab) – psoriasis and Crohn’s disease
• Enbrel (etanercept) – rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune conditions
• Imbruvica (ibrutinib) – certain blood cancers
• Pomalyst (pomalidomide) – multiple myeloma
• Revlimid (lenalidomide) – multiple myeloma

Each ranks among the highest-spend products in the CMS Part D spending dataset, the federal government’s most detailed public accounting of where the program’s dollars go. The pattern across all 10 is consistent: brand-name drugs with limited or no generic competition had the most room to raise prices aggressively, and their manufacturers used it.

Why list prices still hit patients hard

Drug companies and pharmacy benefit managers are quick to note that list prices do not reflect what insurers or patients pay after rebates and discounts. That is partly true, but it sidesteps a painful reality for millions of Part D enrollees. Many plans use coinsurance, charging patients a percentage of a drug’s list price rather than a flat copay. When a drug’s sticker price doubles, a beneficiary paying 25% coinsurance watches their bill double right along with it, no matter what rebate the insurer negotiated behind closed doors.

Manufacturers of several drugs on AARP’s list have pointed to patient assistance programs and rebates as evidence that actual out-of-pocket costs are lower than list prices suggest. Bristol Myers Squibb, the maker of Eliquis and Revlimid, and AbbVie, which markets Imbruvica, have each said publicly that the majority of their commercially insured patients pay significantly less than the list price. However, the specific dollar amounts of rebates negotiated with Part D plans are not publicly disclosed, making it impossible for patients or independent researchers to verify how much of a list-price increase is offset before it reaches the pharmacy counter. AARP’s analysis focuses on list prices precisely because they are the only pricing data that is fully transparent and verifiable through federal records.

Rising list prices also push up Part D premiums and increase taxpayer costs across the program, effects that ripple well beyond the pharmacy counter.

How AARP measured the gap

AARP’s methodology, used consistently for more than a decade in its Rx Price Watch series, compares each drug’s list-price trajectory against the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U). Between January 2020 and December 2024, the CPI-U climbed roughly 21%, the sharpest inflationary stretch in decades, driven by pandemic-era supply disruptions, energy costs, and housing. Yet that surge still fell far short of the price growth these 10 medications posted.

Independent researchers and government auditors have used the same CMS and BLS datasets to reach similar conclusions about the pace of brand-name drug price growth, which lends weight to AARP’s findings even though the organization is, by its own description, an advocacy group working on behalf of older Americans.

The human cost behind the percentages

Reporting by KFF Health News and AARP’s own member surveys have documented what these price hikes look like at the kitchen table: retirees rationing insulin doses, splitting pills to stretch a 30-day supply into 60, or delaying refills until the next Social Security deposit clears. A recurring scenario involves someone living on roughly $2,000 a month in Social Security who faces a single brand-name copay north of $300, forcing a monthly choice between filling the prescription and covering groceries or the electric bill.

Those stories are anecdotal, but they track precisely with what the federal data shows. When a drug’s price nearly doubles and a patient’s income barely budges, the math leaves little room for anything other than hard tradeoffs.

Federal protections: real progress, real limits

Congress has moved to cushion seniors from the worst of these costs. The Inflation Reduction Act, signed in August 2022, created a $2,000 annual cap on out-of-pocket Part D spending that took effect in January 2025. The same law gave Medicare the authority to negotiate prices directly with manufacturers for a limited number of high-cost drugs. The first batch of negotiated prices, covering 10 medications, went into effect on January 1, 2026, and a second round covering up to 15 additional drugs is in progress.

Those reforms matter. Eliquis and Jardiance, two of the drugs on AARP’s list, were among the first 10 selected for Medicare negotiation, meaning their negotiated prices are now in effect for Part D enrollees. But the negotiation program covers only a small fraction of the thousands of brand-name products on the market. The remaining drugs on AARP’s list, and many others like them, can still see their list prices climb with little financial pushback from the federal government.

The $2,000 cap, meanwhile, protects individual beneficiaries from catastrophic annual costs but does nothing to slow the underlying price increases that drive premiums and taxpayer spending higher year after year.

What patients can do right now

Beneficiaries who have noticed rising copays on a brand-name drug have several concrete steps available to them:

• Ask about generics and biosimilars. For several high-cost drug classes, including certain autoimmune therapies, biosimilar competition has started to push prices lower. A biosimilar version of Stelara, for example, entered the U.S. market in early 2025. Availability varies by plan formulary, so a conversation with a pharmacist or prescriber is the fastest way to find out.
• Compare Part D plans during open enrollment. Medicare’s Plan Finder tool lets beneficiaries plug in their specific medications and see which plans offer the lowest total cost. Switching plans can sometimes cut annual spending by hundreds of dollars, particularly when one plan places a drug on a lower formulary tier.
• Know the $2,000 ceiling. No Part D enrollee should pay more than $2,000 out of pocket in a calendar year, regardless of how expensive their prescriptions are. Beneficiaries who hit that threshold early in the year pay nothing for covered drugs for the rest of the year.
• Check the data yourself. The CMS Part D spending dataset is public and searchable. Looking up a specific drug’s total spending and beneficiary count can give patients hard numbers to bring into a conversation with their doctor.

Pricing pressure persists despite new guardrails

AARP’s report arrives at a moment when prescription drug affordability remains one of the most politically volatile issues in American health care. Manufacturers argue that list prices fund the research pipeline behind breakthrough therapies. Patient advocates counter that no R&D budget justifies price increases that force seniors to choose between medication and meals.

Federal data supports the basic arithmetic: brand-name drug prices are climbing far faster than wages, Social Security cost-of-living adjustments, or general inflation. Medicare’s new negotiation authority and the $2,000 spending cap are meaningful first steps, but as of May 2026, they cover only a sliver of the market. For the drugs that fall outside those guardrails, the pricing trajectory AARP documented shows no sign of bending on its own.