Your prescription co-pays are about to skyrocket. Here's why

Prices to go up nearly 50 percent in next four years.

Spending on prescription drugs is expected to pick up over the next four years according to a report from the health information company, IMH Health Holdings. Americans may spend as much as $640 billion for their medications in 2020.

LOS ANGELES, CA (California Network) - The drug prices are out of control as pharmaceutical manufacturers keep raising prices and bringing expensive new drugs to market. Although Obamacare was supposed to help, the annual growth rate for drug prices is at least 4 to 7 percent annually.

Drug prices could rise a full 46 percent, up to $640 billion before 2020, according to the IMH report.

In 2015 alone, American prices for drugs rose an average of 8.5 percent. Americans spent $309 billion on prescription medications in 2015.

There are two problems on display here. The first is that Americans are addicted to drugs. We demand pills for everything. Americans take an average of 10 pills per day. Even trivial conditions have pills and medicines available. What does all this medicine do to our body chemistry? What about our water supply?

The second problem is the rampant greed of the drug manufactures, who are pricing many drugs so high that they are out of reach for many people. The manufacturers offer rebates on some medications, but the process the obtain the rebates, as well as the amount of the rebate, is often concealed and requires extra effort, something people who are ill are rarely inclined to do. 

There are no plans before Congress to decrease the price of prescription drugs. The United States pays the highest prices for medications of any nation in the world.

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