E-DRUG: Same tablet and company but different name (3)
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If prescribers make it a habit to prescribe exclusively by generic names,
such
marketing tricks would be completely irrelevant, and the industry might
stop
playing these consumer hostile tricks too.
Thus, what the EU could do about this would be encouraging their doctors
to
prescribe by generic name.
My reply doesn't have a lot to do with the issue of reimporting but it
might be of general interest to see how health services can end up
paying for drugs much more than they should.
In the UK, contrary to what happens in several other European countries,
we ALWAYS prescribe by the pharmacological name of the drug, which is
the name retained when the this becomes a generic.
However, the problem arises at dispensing level as pharmacists are not
bound to prescribe the cheapest drug with that particular
pharmacological compound. More often than not what is dispensed to the
patient is a "branded generic". The difference in price between a "true
generic" and a branded one is generally small (even when the branded
generic costs 2 or 3 times as
much), but often the difference is not so small. At any rate, given the
volume of prescription only drugs, this freedom of choice at dispensing
level
must cost the National Health Service million of pounds every year.
It is also interesting to see that branded generics always come in
flashy boxes, with "health-problem related", intuitive names contrary to
the plain boxes and the difficult to pronounce pharmacological names of
true generics. This is not a big deal in wealthy countries as consumers
are generally well off, but if the same applies to developing countries,
I guess it will be much more serious.
Valeria
Dr Valeria Frighi
Oxford Centre for Diabetes, Endocrinology and Metabolism
Churchill Hospital
Oxford
UK
valeria.frighi@dtu.ox.ac.uk
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