Americans Need Generic Drugs. But Can They Trust Them?

[Darryl]

nytimes.com/2019/05/11/opin...

and

nytimes.com/2019/05/11/heal...

[Fairwind]

This is what you can expect when you allow "Big Pharma" to move most of their manufacturing operations off-shore to low-wage, low regulation countries. With this system in place you would think drugs would be dirt-cheap as the cost to make them is very low..But as we all know, that is not the case....Drugs are priced by whatever the market will bare...

When you buy a prescription drug, it comes in a container provided by the pharmacy that filled the prescription. Nowhere on the label will you find the country or the name of the company that actually made the drug..What a racket..

[teamkv]

Wonder who’s big PR agency arranged to get this article in the NYT....

[JimVanHorn]

Of the hundreds of thousands of medications being produced there is not a lot of mistakes and misbranding in manufacturing. There are recalls in the brand named medicines all the time, but you don't hear about that because they are more regulated. Some generic companies have an excellent reputation for 30 or more years, but not all are this way. When a pharmacist orders generic medications it is his or her reputation that they are safe and effective. I believe that the major drug companies tell these stories so people will use brand named drugs. Now many drug companies that make the brand name also make a generic for the same drug (after the 17 year patent runs out). The system is very corrupt. Doctors and politicians get vacations and kick backs for prescribing certain drugs. The vacations are called "medical seminars" for 10 days in exotic locations. Each time a pharmacy fills a prescription, data is sent back to the drug company about how many times a doctor wrote a brand name prescription. This determines the perks to the doctor and the drug salesman's salary. When a drug salesman calls on a doctor he leaves samples and often lunch for the employees. This all costs money, big money. Prices of medications have nothing to do with the cost of making the medicine. Drug salesmen are rehearsed to say "certain things" about a drug in a specific way to make the drug seem better than the others that are similar. Actually, when a company spends billions to make a new drug, another company adds a chlorine or a bromine to the molecule and announces it as a new and better drug! We call these "me too drugs" because 3 or 4 companies are making essentially the same drug. They all have salesmen who extol the virtues of their new drug. Now there is competition to have the best sales, but not necessarily what is best for the patient and the price. So I use generics from a pharmacist I trust. P.S. I was a pharmacist for 35 years.