Patients don’t take their pills properly. Some estimates are that 30% of written scripts are never filled.  Now there’s a new Harris study out showing that 33% of patients are actively non-compliant. Of course if all these patients took all the pills that they were supposed to, then pharma costs would be much higher — Datamonitor is quoted as saying that’s $30 billion a year higher (or 15-ish percent).  And of course if they all took all their pills properly overall health costs would be much lower, right? Right? (Where is the echo from PhRMA when you need it?).  Still the cost impact of non-compliance is something to ponder.

PS "Complieant" was my add to the "just-off" definitions list run on THCB a few weeks back.