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According to some experts from the pharmaceutical realm, and those studying the trends associated with this industry, the United States is all set to become a flourishing ground for generic drugs in the coming years.
Paying close attention to this news was the US health care system, which anticipates a profit of approximately $70 billion in these years.
Stats And Speculation
While various periodicals and journals of the medical world are specifically abuzz with the words ‘patent’ and ‘expiry’, it cannot be the only reason for generic drugs gaining the amount of traction that it is in the USA.
A study suggests that a person’s family doctor or a nearby physician would prescribe generic drugs for about 93 times out of every 100 prescriptions all over the US. Additionally, another recent survey furnished that generic medications accounted for a whopping 85 percent of all medical prescriptions sourced from a particular year. Evidently, the stats that line up in favor of patents can come nowhere close in correspondence to these revelations. However, it is factually true that many well-known branded drugs are nearing the expiry of their respective patents.
Interestingly, the rise in generic drug prescription has shown a substantial amount of promise only in the last ten years, since it was measured at 83 percent in the year 2003. The experts are of the opinion that the circulation of generic drugs never indicated such a steep hike and that too in such a short window of time. Clearly, there are a few more factors at work for the generic drugs to be widely available, than just the expiry of patents.
Causes
At one point in time, generic drugs were looked at as dubious medicines that could only be the choice of the helpless and the desperate. However, this perception of generic drugs has changed with the correspondent change in time. In fact, the prevalent situation is quite contrary to the aforementioned, as more and more people have now begun to prefer generic medicines over their branded counterparts. The plausible reasons for this to happen are listed as below:
Affordability : Almost every regular medicine consumer of the world would like his/her medicines to be cheap and easily affordable. With the kind of health care reality patients are confronted by, i.e. in terms of its expenses, the availability of low-cost medicines would be a huge chip off their shoulders.
Availability : Branded drugs take years of research, field-tests, simulations and experimentation before they are finally launched in the market, hence they are pretty expensive. However, the costly nature of these drugs makes it difficult for the small-time suppliers or pharma companies to purchase and store them in bulk. This is the reason why one would notice that not all druggists can provide branded drugs, or not all websites can ship these well-known medicines.
Pharmacological Action : another big plus point of acquiring these drugs is that one can avail all the soothing and relieving effects of a branded drug, at a really reasonable price. Essentially, the various drug monitoring associations like the FDA insist on making the mechanism of generic drugs to be the same as their branded counterparts. This is the reason why generic drugs act as the same as branded drugs in person’s body, albeit at a relatively cheaper cost.
Present Scenario And Forecast
As more and more brand name medications are increasingly being made available as lower-cost genetics in the country, the present situation can be said to be favorable from the generic drugs perspective. Studies suggest that about half of the patients suffering from major chronic illnesses were prescribed generic drugs by their doctors.
Presently, about two-thirds of patients having chronic ailments have been prescribed generic medications as part of their treatment regimes. A closer look at this data revealed that the number of patients being prescribed generic drugs for certain conditions were surprisingly higher than the rest. For instance, more than 70 percent of people suffering from conditions like high blood pressure, migraine, depression, etc. were prescribed generic medications on almost a first-aid basis.
Therefore, taking all the influential factors of using generic medication into account, it can be ascertained that the coming years would bode well for the consumption and circulation of generic drugs in the USA.
