Here’s a little lesson I received yesterday in the economics of pharmaceuticals.
We were shopping at Costo, and I was wandering the aisles looking for an antihistamine.
I first spotted a prominent display of Claritin, the brand name product. Each pack had two small bottles of Claritin, a total of 104 or 105 tablets. The price was $31.99, if I recall correctly. A pretty good buy, compared to the price at Longs, for example.
But then, just a few feet away, there was a comparable Kirkland Signature brand product. This generic version contained 365 tablets. The cost–just $10.99. The generic didn’t have the Claritin name, but it did have exactly the same active ingredient. The active ingredient in both…10 mg of Loratadine. Exactly the same in both packages.
So the generic product had three times as many tablets at one-third the price. Per tablet, each advertised as providing 24-hours of allergy relief, it looks like this. The Claritin costs about 30 cents per tablet. The generic brand just 3 cents.
You can guess which one I bought.
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Claritin price includes the cost of commercials, showing allergy-free gal, dancing thru the field of flowers…. trailed by a list of Possible contraindications.
Surprised that you as an informed consumer did not know this long ago. Similar situations at Walmart with their house brands (Equate).
Did you notice where they were made? I expect that many drug prices will go upas the ramifications of chinas Deceit catches up with them and we stop doing business there. Our leaders have sold us out.
The name brands has to recover all of that research and development. So it can keep pricing at whatever it wants. After some period of time, which I think varies depending on patents and FDA approval, the generic manufacturers can enter the market and compete. But you are right – they are the otherwise the same.
I find Allegra (Fexofenadine) works better for me.