The main advantages of generic medicine can be felt in your pocketbook. Brand-name drug cost more because their prices reflect the drugs companies' attempts to recoup the costs of research, development, testing and expensive marketing and advertising campaigns. Once generic medicines go on the market, they ride on the reputation of their brand-name counterparts, requiring much less overhead to produce and advertise and passing the savings along to the consumer. Plus, more availability of a drug drives prices down and keeps them low.
And the benefits don't stop there. Each FDA-approved generic drug, like Sildenafil Citrate is required to be as effective and contain the same active ingredients of its brand-name counterpart. This assurance lets you know that you're not wasting your money an alternative that is merely cheap, but that isn't as effective or safe as name-brand.
There are two major reasons why generic drugs can be sold for a greatly lowered price than the original patented drugs. Firstly, the research and development stage is already been done so there is no great cost associated with their production. Also, with competition for the drug, regular market practices take over and the ability to choose between brands will usually keep the cost at a competitive level.
To a lesser degree, generic drug producers can also take advantage of the previous advertising by the original company that has familiarized people with the drug and will not have to get the idea of the product before the public view.
There are regulatory tests to assure that the generic form of a drug is equivalent to the original although some small changes in the exact chemical elements are allowed provided the substituted ingredients are equally effective as the original. This is usually the case in some of the chemicals that help carry the active ingredient into the blood stream.
While these substitutes are tested to see that they perform equally, there is the bias among some doctors that only the original works the way they want and will disallow generic drugs to be filled by a pharmacy. There is no scientific rationale for this as the generic drugs have to pass the equivalence test before they can be released.
"Prescribing generic rather than brand name drugs is a key factor in helping control soaring healthcare costs."
