These results highlight the importance of eliminating anticompetitive behavior by
brand-name drug companies so that we get more lower-priced generic drugs on the market," Debra Whitman, executive vice president and chief public policy officer at AARP, said in a written statement.
It is important to note that there will always be a slight, but not medically important, level of natural variability-just as there is for one batch of
brand-name medicine compared with the next batch of
brand-name product.
The researchers found that for generic medications at identical doses, the total spending on
brand-name products was $303 million in 2016, compared with an estimated spending of $68 million on generic constituents.
Medafford Global's Pharmacy Benefit Manager relationship makes discounts of up to 80% possible and connects consumers to affordable discounted
brand-name medications from Tier One international pharmacies.
In fact, prescriptions for
brand-name medications are almost twice as likely to be "abandoned"--prescription filled, but never picked up--than generic equivalents, due to their higher costs.
Gagne and colleagues noted among the limitations of their study its nonrandomized design, the use of only three statins, and the fact that they could not determine who decided whether patients initiated a generic or
brand-name drug, noting that many states require pharmacists to dispense generics unless a prescriber or patient requests otherwise.
won't sell samples of its
brand-name drug Ampyra, which improves multiple sclerosis patients' walking ability.
For statins, 56% of the variation was due to the use of
brand-name rather than generic drugs.
We also found that the U&C price index for our second basket of 55
brand-name drugs increased at an average annual rate of 8.3 percent during our time period.
* Use caution when switching a patient to a generic modified-release formulation, which may not have the same pharmacokinetic profile as its
brand-name counterpart.
They have to be as safe and effective as the
brand-name, or innovator, versions they're patterned after.