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Pharmaceutical Practices - Generics Essay

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Obstruction of Generic Pharmaceuticals in the Marketplace

It has been estimated that most of the major pharmaceutical companies have engaged in some unusual practices to keep generic equivalents of their products from entering the marketplace. These measures usually have a negative effect on consumers and health care plan providers, prohibiting them from buying equally effective products at a discounted rate. The objective of the major pharmaceutical companies in attempting to prevent generics from entering the market is clearly to provide their shareholders with exceptional profits. Some would argue that there is a morality argument to be made against “big pharma” in these cases of market manipulation. We will explore the moral …show more content…

Trying to delay this patent expiration is the most common method of keeping generics off the street. Every single hour that a generic is kept off of the shelves, it only means more sale of the original pharmaceutical. Even if the patent lawsuit has no merit, the delay due to legal filings and court tie-ups can buy valuable time for the original patent holder. Below you will find several examples of brand name pharmaceuticals that have enjoyed a longer monopolistic life due to some innovative, yet highly controversial techniques:

 Tamoxifen, which is sold under the brand name Nolvadex, is an example of company collusion. The generic version only sells for about 5 percent less than that of Nolvadex, which is made by AstraZeneca. The meager discount is a result of a private agreement between Barr and Zeneca, made after they left the courtroom. Under that pact, Zeneca paid Barr $21 million and Barr agreed to sell Zeneca's drug rather than produce its own version. Zeneca became AstraZeneca in a 1999 merger.

 An often repeated example is the way Eli Lilly prevented the Lupin group from entering into the generic market for a drug. It got a patent for about 70 different chemical processes used to make the relevant drug.

 The example of Cephalon has truly become the way that businesses have skirted the 1984 legislation acts. Instead of defending its patent in court, they paid the competing generic manufacturers

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