For those wanting to keep their health insurance expenses down, generic drugs are the answer.
Using generic drugs is likely one of the smartest moves any health conscious and budget-wise American can make. Of course if the doctor has insisted on no substitutions, it will make a difference. That doesn’t mean a patient should not ask about viable alternatives, even to brand name drugs.
The price differences are phenomenal. Many doctors don’t stop to think about the price of drugs for the patient; they just hand out the script and leave the room. So check to make sure there isn’t another alternative that would work just as well, if not better, and be less expensive.
While physicians are often too busy to keep on their toes about the various new drugs and their costs on the market today, they are finally getting to the point where, in some instances, they make a concession to prescribing a generic drug if they know the patient is in financial straights. It doesn’t hurt for the patient to speak up and tell the doctor they can’t afford a particular drug either.
It’s better to make the move to using generic drugs as soon as possible, as many government agencies, insurance companies and health administrators are slapping limits on dollar amounts for prescribed drugs. They should be doing that in order to be financially prudent, as the health care deficit in the U.S. is staggering.
The interesting thing in the first place is the reason for the high price of drugs. This is directly due to Big Pharma putting out new drugs to make more money to develop more drugs. The only way to convince consumers to use their new drugs is to bombard them with “in your face” advertising that makes patients run to the doctor and ask to “try” a new drug.
The new drug isn’t always better than the old ones, and in fact, may just be a derivative of the old drug. However, the only way to increase the prices of the drug is to claim it is new. Pretty sneaky marketing, however, and unfortunately it works. To make more money, Big Pharma also must fight generic drug makers tooth and nail to try and keep them off the market or from producing generic derivatives of the original brand name seller.
Somehow, thanks to brand name drug manufacturers, Americans got the idea that generic drugs are bad. Nothing could be further from the truth. Generics are precisely the same with minor differences such as the color of the pill coating. Generic drugs are also much cheaper, and that is a major bonus to the consumer’s financial bottom line.
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