Medicaid drug utilization review: a critical appraisal.

During the 1980s, prescription drug costs increased faster than other components of the Medicaid budget. In 1980, total vendor payments for prescription drugs were $1.3 billion, or 5.7 percent of all Medicaid expenditures. By 1990, prescription drug expenditures had risen to $4.4 billion, or 6.3 percent of the Medicaid budget (National Pharmaceutical Council 1991). Faced with this expenditure pattern and increasing federal deficits, Congress included a provision in the Omni-