Brand Name Vs Generic Medication

There are multiple health concerns worldwide and more and more drugs are needed every day. Many drugs however, are extremely expensive to develop, test, and produce. According to the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development (2002), it costs up to $802 million to bring a new drug to the market. In 2002, pharmaceutical companies spent $34 billion in research and development (Center-Watch, 2003). In addition to the costs, the overall time from the discovery to approve and market the drug can take up to 15 years.

In 2015, the pharmaceutical industry spent over 27 billion dollars on advertising. The two greatest components of this effort were promotional advertising and free medication sampling, which the pharmaceuticals invested 15.5 and 5.7 billion dollars respectively (“Persuading the Prescribers”). Promotional advertising involves direct contact with health professionals, the most common being extravagant lunch conferences held for physicians and their staff. On the other hand, sampling involves distributing free sample of medications to physicians, who then have a choice of providing these samples to patients. As a result of these methods, the industry has seen revenue around $400 billion with 90% of physicians having a relationship with a drug company (Campbell 2007). Moreover, the prices of prescriptions continue to rise; a copay of a generic drug is $11.72, preferred brand drug is $36.37 and a specialty drug is $58.37 (Coleman and Geneson 2014). Although the profits are immense in the numbers demonstrated above, it is no surprise when pharmaceutical drug companies elevate their prices even more. For instance, recently Turing Pharmaceuticals raised the price of their medication Daraprim from $13.50 to $750. Keep in mind, this medication is used for threatening parasitic infections, aids, and cancer with alternative options currently found to be inefficient (Pollack 2015). Another example of this practice involves cycloserine, a drug used to

Prescription drug prices are on the rise in the United States. Currently, the United States does not implement a price control on prescription drugs. Every day the supply and demand for prescription drugs fluctuates. Pharmaceutical companies produce drugs that are necessary for survival. Therefore, it is necessary for research and development to continue in the United States. Those suffering the effects of exorbitant prices must do so until a generic form of a prescription drug is produced. Once approved by the FDA, new drugs will make their appearance on the market and patients will no longer suffer financially. Until then, it is necessary for pharmaceutical companies to price their drugs based on the idea of supply and demand. This produces the profit used to fund research. Price controls discourage innovation. If a price control were set in place, of course the price of prescription drugs would decrease. However, the development of new drugs decreases with it. Today’s generation would benefit from lower prices, while future generations would suffer from the loss of drug innovation.

Medicine can help prevent disease, manage pain, fight pathogens, and manage chronic conditions. The Food and Drug Administration frequently documents information about different medicines to ensure that they are safe for people to take. Prescription medicines are drugs that a doctor has to write permission for you to get because they are to treat a specific problem. Over the counter medicines are ones that you can buy at the store because they have been found safe by the FDA. Medicine abused occurs when someone uses the drug for something other than its intended purpose. Abusing medicine is very

H. This is not the case. In fact, a little over fifty percent of prescription generic medications are made by the same manufacturer as the brand name drug.

Every pharmaceutical company produces and sells a generic and a brand version of every drug in the US. While, there are variations in the quality and effectiveness of the two versions, the basic composition is the same. The companies earn most of their revenues from the brand version, which is more expensive and usually sold at private pharmacies and stores. The generic medicines are sent to the public hospitals and pharmacies.

Recently, there has been a debate about the high prescription drug prices in the United States. Accounting for 9.7% of the national health expenditure, $329.2 billion was spent on prescription medications ($931 per person) in 2011 (Linton, 2014). So what exactly is the average American getting with their $931? Well, because there is an extraordinary amount of time, effort, and energy that goes into creating, manufacturing, and distributing a new drug, it’s no wonder the prices are so high. But what other costs are folded into the prices of your prescribed medications? This review looks beyond just the research and development costs needed to take a new drug from idea to shelf by examining several journals and other credible, secondary sources, to shed some light on how much pharmaceutical companies are spending to develop, advertise, and sell their drugs.

Though the chemical composition of the cheap Ativan is the same as that of the branded Ativan, some of the generic medications have unique inactive components. Not all generic brands are approved by the FDA. Only a very few manufacturers have gotten approval from the FDA for their lorazepam medications. These verified generic brands are as effective as the brand name one.

In the United States, a drug can only be advertised legally after being approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Once attaining at least one FDA-approved use, physicians can prescribe a drug for other unapproved uses, based on their clinical judgment; this is referred to as “off-label use” (McCambridge, 2008). In general, marketing drugs for off-label uses is illegal; however, pharmaceutical companies have gone to various lengths within their legal rights to accomplish exactly that.

Why there is a cost difference between brand name, and generic drugs, and is there really a difference in relief of symptoms, or pain from brand name v.s generic drugs.

The pharmacy cannot use active ingredients which are not components of FDA approved drugs. All active ingredients must have passed an FDA new drug application

There is a clear consensus that generic savings are now a large and important source of health care savings.12 Generic drugs can reduce healthcare costs through multiple pathways including generic substitution of drugs, substitution of drugs in the same therapeutic class, and reduction in the average branded prices paid by consumers due to generic substitution.12 Generic substitution is a common practice, and pharmacists pay an essential role in promoting generic medicines.7 Setting mechanisms to increase substitution of generic drugs for branded drugs that are not therapeutically equivalent, but have the same indication, has a great potential for increasing cost savings.12 However, generic regulations differ from one state to another in many

The biosimilar can not be called generic because are not clinically interchangeable. The biosimilar do not have the same chemical active ingredient of the novel product as the generic drug. In comparison with a generic, the biosimilar to be approved needs to be have clinical and preclinical studies while the generic do not require this studies but pharmacokinetics tests.

According to the FDA, Generic Drugs have the same quality and performance as brand name drugs. The FDA requires generic drugs have to have the same active ingredient, strength, dosage form, and route of administration to be approved. They are required to have the pass tests proving they have the same bioequivalence as their brand name counterpart. For an example, for the generic drug to qualify as a generic drug, it must have the same blood concentration level as the brand name drug (U.S Food and Drug Administration, 2015).

A Generic drug (generics) is a drug product that is comparable to a brand/reference-listed drug product in dosage form, strength, quality and performance characteristics, and intended use. These are produced and distributed without patent protection. The Generic drug must contain the same active ingredients as the original formulation. Generic drugs are identical or within an acceptable bioequivalent range to the brand name counterpart with respect to pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic properties. Most of the generic products are available once the patent protections afforded to the original developer is expired, when it happens it often leads to substantially lower prices for both the original brand name product and the generic forms. Drug patents in US give twenty years of protection, but as they are applied for before clinical trials begin, the effective life of a drug patent tends to be between seven and twelve years.1