Prescription drug costs account for an increasingly large fraction of overall health care costs in the developed world. Given this and the increased scrutiny paid to the large profits reported by the pharmaceutical industry, it is not surprising that reducing drug costs, while simultaneously maintaining health care quality, is an important goal. Promotion of generic drug use is a key strategy in this effort.
Despite the individual and societal benefits associated with lowering drug costs, generic drugs are underused. This is occurring even in the face of compelling evidence from bioequivalence and randomized controlled trials supporting the equivalence of generic drug products1 and efforts from payers to move patients and prescribers toward generics (eg, tiered pharmacy benefits and prior authorization for less cost-effective agents). As Green et al2 point out, the adoption of generic statins to decrease coronary heart disease risk has been slow and disappointingly incomplete, given the equivalence (in terms of clinical efficacy and safety) of generic-available and brand-only statins.