For the last several years, pharmaceutical spending growth has consistently outpaced overall growth in health care spending. But these increases, which still represent a relatively small portion of overall spending, frequently come with new drugs that improve existing treatments or create new medicines altogether. Still, high price tags continue to creep up, and patients and policy makers are nervous about the implications for access to care. Fortunately, many block buster drugs will soon face competition from generic versions as patent protections expire. Of the 20 top selling drugs in 2013, 13 will no longer have patent protection after 2016, with three more patents set to expire in 2018.[1] As demonstrated in the chart below, between $10 billion and $15 billion in annual revenue will be exposed to new generic competition every year between 2013 and 2016.

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[1] Data on drug sales is taken from http://www.drugs.com/stats/top100/2013/sales