Generic Drugs and Cost-Effective Chronic Disease Prevention

Introduction

The cost of healthcare — including the cost of health insurance — in the United States has risen exponentially over the last several years. When it comes to healthcare for those suffering from chronic diseases, the cost is often more than the patient can afford. The use of generic drugs, however, could reduce those costs and bring the overall expense of caring for a person with a chronic disease down to a more manageable level. This paper reviews available literature on the subject of generic drug costs and addresses the need for doctors to recommend generic medications to their patients.

Generic Drug Costs and the Patent System

According to an article in the journal Health Affairs, chronic disease accounts for "the overwhelming majority of U.S. healthcare costs" (Shrank et al., 2011, p. 1351). Shrank explains that managing patients with chronic diseases is often accomplished through "pharmacologic therapy," and when special attention is paid to cost-effectiveness in the drugs being administered, high-quality care can cost less. In the coming years, many patents for "commonly prescribed chronic disease medications" will be expiring. This presents an important opportunity, because "highly effective generic alternatives" will be entering the market to replace patented brand-name drugs, offering a cost-effective option for patients and providers (Shrank et al., 2011, p. 1351).

Shrank et al. cite a "highly publicized" study endorsed by the American Heart Association and the American Diabetes Association showing that — using "brand-name medication costs in their analysis" — up to "244 million quality-adjusted life-years could be gained" over the next thirty years in the United States if appropriate preventive care is offered to people with cardiovascular disease and diabetes (p. 1351). However, the study concluded that these strategies, while life-extending, are very expensive. It is precisely this finding that motivates Shrank and colleagues to pursue the argument that using generic drugs can produce significant cost savings.

When a drug manufacturer creates a new medication, the process is lengthy and costly. For this reason, the U.S. government grants the developing drug company a "twenty-year monopoly" on that medication. Drug companies profit substantially from the sale of these drugs, but once the patent expires — typically after twenty years — other manufacturers may produce and market the medication as a generic drug (Shrank et al., 2011, p. 1352).

Given the importance of preventing cardiovascular disease — the most common cause of death in the United States, with approximately eighty million Americans affected by some form of it — the availability of generic drugs as first-line therapy can offer substantial savings for patients (Shrank et al., 2011).

Chronic Disease and the Financial Burden of Healthcare

An article in The American Journal of Managed Care asserts that due to the increasingly high costs of medical care in the United States, healthcare costs consumed more than 16.2% of the nation's gross national product in 2006 (Rodin et al., 2009). Furthermore, caring for chronic conditions in the U.S. consumes 78% of all healthcare dollars (Rodin et al., 2009). Given these figures, reducing the cost of drugs proven effective in treating chronic illnesses should be a high priority for the healthcare industry and for physicians in particular.

Conclusion

There can be little doubt that generic drugs are less expensive than their brand-name counterparts and are proven effective in treating chronic diseases. Doctors need to be encouraged to research and prescribe generic drugs, especially when patients face financial hardship. Physicians should be held accountable for sharing helpful financial information with their patients and for making cost-effective prescribing decisions a standard part of clinical practice.