April 30, 2026
Josh Morgan/Imagn Images
Americans spent $915 billion last year on prescription drugs, an amount that was driven by increased spending on weight-loss drugs like Ozempic, above.
Americans spent more money on prescription drugs than ever before in 2025, and this year, prescription drug spending is expected to exceed $1 trillion for the first time.
The increased spending is a result of more people using medications – primarily GLP-1, weight-loss drugs – rather than from rising costs, the annual report from the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists says.
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In 2025, drug spending rose nearly 13% to $915 billion, with expenditures on tirzepatide, branded as Zepbound, and semaglutide, branded as Ozempic and Wegovy, at nearly $60 billion each. The GLP-1 figures – totaling about 14% of all U.S. drug spending last year – are likely an underestimate, because they do not include people paying for them out-of-pocket, the report said.
"GLP-1s have fundamentally reshaped the drug-spending landscape," said Eric Tichy, the report's lead author and division chair of supply chain management at Mayo Clinic. "At $132 billion, this single class of drugs accounted for nearly one-third of all growth and is moving the entire market. And we are still on the steep part of the curve."
A blood thinner used to help prevent blood clots and strokes, called apixaban, had the third highest spending at $29 billion.
Expenditures were also high in 2025 for injectable cancer drugs and for new treatments for rare diseases like ALS, according to the report.
