News April
FDA: Generic drugs can help slash prices
Prescription drug prices soften dramatically even with moderate
competition, the Food and Drug Administration said Tuesday in an
analysis that shows the arrival in the marketplace of just two generic
versions of a brand-name medicine can nearly halve the price consumers
pay. When a brand-name drug faces just one generic competitor, that
challenger typically sells for 94 percent of the cost of its branded
rival.
More competition quickly widens that discount: Once a second generic
manufacturer appears, the average price of a generic drug drops
to just 52 percent of the brand-name version's cost per dose, according
to the analysis posted on the FDA Web site.
Prices continue to tumble, albeit more slowly but almost without
exception, as more manufacturers join the market, the analysis shows.
By the time nine manufacturers are producing generic versions of
a drug, their products typically sell for just 20 percent of the
price of the brand-name medicine, according to the federal analysis
of 1999-2004 retail sales data on single-ingredient drug products
collected by IMS Health Inc.
Source
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D8GP8SEO6.htm?
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