Why People Prefer Generic Medications To Brand-Name Drugs
You can find Advil and ibuprofen, a generic version of Advil, sitting near each other on the shelves of pharmacies in Los Angeles or elsewhere. Ibuprofen and Advil are two medication types with identical pill count, active components and dose. The difference between the two is that Advil possibly costs thrice more as compared to ibuprofen. Los Angeles pharmacies and other pharmacy operations described it as a case of brand tax, a rise in price just for a popular brand.
The good thing is that a simple way of saving considerably on prescription medications is to switch from brand-name products to generic options. It is especially true for millions of people in the US who already find it challenging to pay for prescription medication types.
Are Generic Medications With Prescriptions Just As Effective And Safe?
To cut the long story short, yes. A Food and Drug Administration approval requires every generic medication type to work identically to its branded version. Further, the FDA approves only medication types with reliable manufacturing and safe components for sale. Generic drugs and brand-name medications must adhere to identical safety regulations. Why? Because they contain the same dosage, active components and pill count as their brand-name versions.
Why Do Generic Medications Cost Less?
Inventing a new medication type requires a company to use an expensive and time-intensive development process. It takes about 1.40 billion US dollars and 12 years to test, approve and supply a usual prescription drug.
For that reason, as the drug becomes available to the public, a patent often protects the original producer to aid it in recovering drug development costs. The lone option available to patients is to go for the branded product when the producer has an active patent for it. The other producers can start to make the generic version of the drug only when the patent expires, which can create competition and lower prices.
How Much Less Costly Is A Generic Medication Type?
Answering this question requires comparing the rates of branded versions of medications with those of their generic counterparts. When it comes to Lipitor, for instance, $521.21 is the average price. On the other hand, the generic variety of Lipitor, namely atorvastatin, costs $79 on average. The form of drug and other factors determine how much you can save by choosing generic meds instead of branded ones.