You Need a Prescription... Do You Choose the Generic?

I would have instantly said yes, as I felt I was informed enough to know that generic prescription drugs are just as good as the name brand. But now I am a little skeptical after reading an article from www.usnews.com.

In the article Bernadine Healy M.D. says, "Generic drugs are significantly cheaper and, according to the Food and Drug Administration, are bioequivalent to the drugs they are designed after. No surprise therefore that an analysis of 47 articles comparing brand and generic cardiovascular drugs, just published by researchers at Harvard in the Journal of the American Medical Association, showed similar clinical results. The findings were comforting, but as the researchers noted, these were short-term evaluations, and many of the studies were supported by generic drug companies.

But the comparisons raise another uncertainty that was barely a consideration a decade ago: Unlike most patented and many brand-name drugs, the generics are far more likely to be made in factories in parts of the world like India that have cheap labor and overhead. China—which has suffered a string of manufacturing scandals, including one involving contaminated heparin that led to serious and deadly allergic reactions in the United States—is gearing up to become a major producer of generic drugs and is expected to compete with the likes of India at even lower prices."

My first thoughts after reading this was the tainted baby formula in China. Then I started thinking more about how many people here in the U.S. are out of work and why we are not producing the generic drugs. In the same article Healy also reports that, "foreign countries escape rigorous FDA inspection, documentation of their practices, and follow-up monitoring even when serious manufacturing or drug-handling problems have been identified. Worse, the GAO has identified these problems with FDA oversight in the past, and they have gone largely uncorrected—at the same time that outsourcing of generic drugs to Asia has been skyrocketing.

I know there are many complexities as to why the U.S. is making drugs overseas and I know it has a lot to do with cost and political issues that I am not knowledgeable to debate on. I don't often need prescriptions but now I will take more time discussing with my doctor about the generic alternatives along with researching where my drugs come from. Having a good doctor is important because they will be knowledgeable in making the best decisions for your prescription needs so if you have a good doctor, take the time to ask them what they think about generic drugs and the sited article.