Your Tax Dollar & Medicare Part D

Where does $275.6 billion in prescription drug spending actually go?

$1,838

Per Taxpayer/Year

$275.65B

Total Part D Spending

$5,301

Per Beneficiary

~52M

Part D Enrollees

Where Your $1838 Goes

Top 10 Drugs: $22 Billion

Just 10 drugs account for 8% of all Part D spending. Eliquis alone costs $7.75 billion — more than NASA's annual science budget.

See IRA negotiated drug prices →

GLP-1 Diabetes/Weight Drugs: $8.4 Billion

Ozempic, Trulicity, and Mounjaro are the fastest-growing drug category. Spending has tripled since 2019.

Track GLP-1 spending →

Brand-Name Premium: $185 Billion

Brand-name drugs cost 4.7x more per claim than generics, yet still account for 13.4% of all prescriptions.

Brand vs Generic analysis →

Cost Per Beneficiary by State

Some states cost Medicare significantly more per patient than others — driven by prescribing patterns, drug mix, and population health.

#	State	Cost/Patient*	Total Cost	Prescriptions*
1	District of Columbia	$1,718	$635.5M	2,211,669
2	Alaska	$1,518	$393.3M	1,826,120
3	New York	$1,510	$22.46B	105,457,976
4	Virgin Islands	$1,470	$32.8M	201,205
5	Vermont	$1,442	$546.6M	2,920,801
6	Kentucky	$1,392	$4.89B	31,289,707
7	Oklahoma	$1,387	$3.10B	19,353,617
8	Alabama	$1,386	$5.09B	30,584,451
9	West Virginia	$1,359	$1.86B	12,145,525
10	Indiana	$1,347	$6.29B	37,495,510
11	New Jersey	$1,343	$7.73B	39,615,037
12	Connecticut	$1,342	$3.96B	18,699,012
13	Hawaii	$1,331	$931.1M	4,425,931
14	Massachusetts	$1,323	$7.22B	36,573,366
15	Georgia	$1,316	$8.63B	50,501,774
16	Louisiana	$1,316	$4.53B	28,644,607
17	Missouri	$1,315	$5.75B	37,581,911
18	Tennessee	$1,306	$6.89B	42,290,238
19	Mississippi	$1,298	$2.66B	17,925,714
20	Maryland	$1,284	$4.04B	21,126,484

The Big Picture

📈 Part D spending grew 50% from $183B (2019) to $275.6B (2023)
💊 The top 500 drugs account for the vast majority of spending
🏥 1,380,665 providers prescribed 1,615,685,370 claims
⚖️ The Inflation Reduction Act begins negotiating prices for 10 drugs in 2026
💰 If all brand prescriptions switched to generics, estimated savings: $111.27B

How Much Medicare Part D Waste?

The data-driven estimate of avoidable spending

IRA Drug Price Negotiation

10 drugs, $21.96B — Medicare's first price negotiation

*Cost per patient is calculated from provider-level data (patients seeing multiple providers are counted once per provider). Actual Medicare Part D enrollment: ~52 million (CMS 2023). Data from CMS Medicare Part D Public Use Files, 2023. Taxpayer estimates based on ~150M federal income tax filers.Methodology