Our time dictates to the person necessity to understand very many goods and services – what car, computer, TV, it is better to buy the refrigerator not just like that to throw out money. The same concerns food and clothes. This bowl and medicines as in most cases are available to independent acquisition.
It is very difficult to uninitiated person to understand it, often it isn’t clear at all why two preparations with one general name (the international unlicensed name) differ at the price in tens of times. And why the doctor hasn’t written out this for $5, and that which costs nearly one thousand – it is not differently intrigues of the pharmaceutical companies and villains in the white dressing gowns wishing to dip a hand into a pocket of the poor patient especially as mass media constantly go on about it.
And if the patient decides to ignore recommendations of the doctor and to buy self-willedally cheaper preparation, then in most cases he either won’t help him, or will help, but through much bigger time. If the disease serious, then the doctor, thinking that the appointed preparation “does not work”, will begin to change therapy, plunging the patient into even big expenditure of money and time, and the patient begins to consider the doctor as the clumsy half-educated person – and here the vicious circle so becomes isolated. If you desire to purchase generic drugs do it via Canadian Health and Care Mall.
In this article we will try to dispel such doubts and to explain why one preparations cost very much, and the second little. And why expensive preparation helps very quickly, and with cheap both the patient who doesn’t recover in any way, and the doctor who doesn’t know what else to think up and appoint to help the patient should suffer.
In the pharmaceutical market there are two groups of preparations – original and generic. The first cost much, the second many times (and tens of times) is cheaper than the first. As polls show, no more than 20% of patients know about their existence and difference between them. And therefore the question demands more extended coverage.
So, the original preparation is a new development of the pharmaceutical company which for the first time has opened it, synthesized and has protected the patent for many years (usually 20). Throughout this term the preparation is made only by this company. The original preparation is most often unique in own way and has no analogs at the rival companies therefore in a drugstore you won’t be able to pick up analog while patent protection works. When patent protection is removed and there are analogs, this initial preparation will be most expensive.
Why are original preparations so expensive? The matter is that not all new molecules reach a medicine stage – usually from 5 000 – 10 000 thousand newly opened molecules, no more than ten reach the shelf in a drugstore. It occurs because molecules from the very beginning of the way are checked for safety and efficiency in all possible and impossible ways for what a lot of clinical tests are carried out, with participation of a huge number of people and technical resources, and about 10 years of researches.
All these expenses including for the eliminated molecules, join the cost of new medicine. There are expenses on marketing, training of doctors and pharmacists, expenditure for post-market researches within several years after preparation release to the market for the purpose of obtaining wider data on its safety. On average on a release of one preparation about one billion dollars are required and during action of patent protection the pharmaceutical company tries to pay back the expenses, to earn on the subsequent developments and to get profit. High prices of original preparations are also explained by all this. But there are cases when you are able to order drugs having lower price for example via Canadian Health and Care Mall.
There passes time, and patent protection comes to an end and from this point in the pharmaceutical market there are preparations – generics which are inherently copies of an original tablet. There is a logical question – why they are cheaper. And they are cheaper because the subsequent producers don’t need to be spent for their development, they work with already finished medicinal product, there is no need to prove in big researches safety and efficiency – it has made the company developer in due time. On it the price of generic is significantly lower though requirements to production part and the original and generic have to be absolutely identical, but in practice it is not always so.
You, perhaps, noticed or you will notice now that the cost of generics varies significantly – from expensive to extremely cheap. To it there is an explanation too. The matter is that preparations have to be made according to requirements of the GMP standard (high-quality work practice). In addition WHO (World Health Organization) imposes special requirements to equivalence (similarity) of generics to an original preparation, namely it is required to define bioequivalence, pharmaceutical equivalence (that is full coincidence of all fillers and dyes in original and generic preparations) and therapeutic equivalence (the proof of absolutely identical action both at original, and at generic preparations). Those preparations which have passed all these stages of researches – roads at the cost, the same which have passed only laboratory defined bioequivalence – are very cheap, but their medical effect so often surprises patients and doctors.
We live during an era of the huge choice of various goods, and of course, getting this or that product, we try to choose better that it both has served and pleased us longer. The same approach wouldn’t be bad to be transferred also to the choice of medicines. Health at us one, and cheap but good to restore it, unfortunately, it won’t turn out. And therefore try not to listen to that toad who croaks on you from a drugstore counter.
Category: Generic Drugs
Tags: Generic Drugs, recommendations