Are Generic Drugs the Same as Brand-Name Prescriptions?

Reported December 6, 2013

NEW YORK (MainStreet) — Most people just blindly accept a prescription the doctor hands them, but did it ever occur to you that what's written on that prescription pad is not most effective or even the least expensive prescription drug for your health concerns?

Sometimes your doctor's role as your primary healthcare partner can be compromised by slick drug company marketing materials, biased studies, perks, trips, lots of free samples and other incentives to prescribe the same drugs you see advertised on TV. And your own opinion can be influenced by misleading prescription drug ads you see in TV and in magazines and even by appeals from drug companies that offer discounts and help paying for their drugs, no matter how savvy you think you are.

Drug ads can be purposely misleading

According to the U.S. Federal Drug Administration (FDA), drug companies spend about $25 billion each year promoting their prescription medications in the U.S. Most is spent on promoting drugs to health care professionals, but about one-fifth (and growing) is spent on consumer advertising. You probably think the FDA oversees this pharmaceutical advertising, but it actually only regulates it. In most cases, federal law does not allow the FDA to require drug companies to submit ads for approval before the ads are used. The FDA can only cite companies for violations of FDA advertising rules after an ad has aired or been published, sometimes months later.

"Many new drugs are beneficial but many are not better than the other older, less expensive drugs," says Dr. John Abramson, lecturer in healthcare policy at Harvard Medical School and author of Overdosed America (Harper Perennial, 2008). He explains that "new" only means "recently approved by the FDA" and "better than nothing." It also means, he says, the drug is "not tested on a large number of people taking it over a long period of time." You may think "generic" means "not brand name" or "not as good" but what it really means is that these medications have been on the market for at least seven years so side effects as well as outcomes have been well-documented, notes Abramson. He says prescription medication advertising, both to doctors and to consumers, can be incredibly misleading.

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