A new national media study among 966 viewers of a news clip highlighting the potential dangers of generic brand drugs revealed that nearly half of viewers (46%) reported that they are less likely to purchase generic drugs after watching the video.
Participants were most likely to be “disturbed” by the news story and had a negative perception of all generic drugs after watching it.
It’s hard to really judge the resultswithout seeing the new story, this is “disturbing” to me. Would patients respond similarly to advertising promoting a brand over the generic? What if there is a clinically insignificant difference between the brand and generic that gets picked up by the media? What would have happened if the brand drug had been advertised in a favorable light after the study.
Though there are potential dangers in generic drugs, most studies find them therapeutically equivalent. Many times switching to a generic in the same class, though statistically different, has the same clinical outcome. The media and the general public often do not understand this difference.
The savings from the use of generic drugs to the individual patient and to the health care system at large is astronomical. I wish every pharmacist had the power to substitute drugs (simvastatin for Lipitor, omeprazole for Nexium, etc). This would be an invaluable service to our patients, and many of us already take the time to contact doctors for a switch in cases where patients can’t afford medications or the brand is not covered. In some states pharmacist have a little power to do this on their own. In a hospital setting, pharmacists routinely provide this service. A few simple switches could save the health care industry a fortune.
This report is not terribly valuable because it’s not very detailed, but it does tell me that patients internalize what they hear on the news about drugs. If a generic is ever mentioned on the news it’s the 1 in 10 allergic reaction, counterfeit, non-therapeutically equivalent drug. This makes it even harder for us to convince patients that generics are just as good as the brand.
Here are a few studies (the abstracts) comparing brand to generic drugs:
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