Drug costs

Prescription drugs at their Platonic ideal best can make the sick less sick, prevent people from getting sick or help the sick feel less pain.

Generics do one better. They can do it for less money.

The savings vary, but some generics are 90% cheaper than the brand-name version. If you add up how much generics – and what they call biosimilar drugs — saved in Oregon in 2021, it was about $951 million in Medicare costs.

Big numbers.

So how could Oregon capitalize on that and save money for consumers and the whole health system?

The state’s Prescription Drug Affordability Board took a crack at it.

Drug manufacturers are not always keen to have generics competing with their products. Imagine that. It cuts into profits and that can interfere with developing other or better drugs.

There are some tactics they use.

Pharmaceutical companies actually sometimes pay producers of generic drugs to delay the availability of generics. The Federal Trade Commission said years ago the practice has cost consumers billions. Bills have been proposed in Congress to block it.

Other tactics drug manufacturers use include using the Food and Drug Administration’s citizen petition process to again try to delay generics. Then there’s what’s called product hopping. That’s when a manufacturer comes out with a new and improved version of a drug just before a generic comes out. Reformulating a drug can prevent the launch of a generic. It has happened with drugs such as Prilosec, Suboxone and others.

The list goes on.

We don’t expect Congress to get much done before the presidential election. Maybe after Nov. 5, Congress could act and get federal policy toward generics closer to a Platonic ideal – for consumers, at least.

If you are interested in this issue, we have condensed here all the good work of a 17-page report from the Prescription Drug Affordability into a more digestible chunk. You can find the report here: tinyurl.com/ORgenerics.