Quote:
Originally Posted by Excaliber
I am well versed in the generic drug vs brand name drugs. That particular argument has been raging around my house for about 20 years now!  You could make a solid case for SOME brand name drugs, I don't believe you could make that case for ALL of them. Forced to choose one OR the other, I'd have to lean toward generic on a cost benefit analysis.
I think we screwed up by disallowing drug's from Canada into the health care system. |
Sure, it makes sense to use a generic drug when one's available. Generic drugs account for upwards of 60% of drug utilization in the US already (and this proportion will increase over the next few years as tens of billions of dollars of branded drugs face patent expiration). However, in a lot of cases, there are not direct generic substitutes available.
Regarding importation of drugs from Canada--we would exhaust Canada's supply of drugs very quickly if we were to try and implement widespread importation from Canada. Furthermore, the FDA has already repeatedly indicated that it cannot guarantee the safety of our drug supply if importation is pursued (there’s already a sizeable grey market for fake/counterfeit drugs—which would likely dramatically increase under any importation scenario).