title: Generic drugs in cardiology: will they reduce health care costs?
abstract: The introduction of generic drugs should lower health care costs by reducing the price of drugs. The realization of this goal may, however, not be fully achieved: generic drugs may be underused or misused in comparison to prescription drugs because of a lack of ongoing postgraduate physician education. More importantly, there is little incentive to explore new indications for soon-to-be generic drugs and drugs that are already generic. The failure to explore new indications for soon-to-be and existing generic drugs may result in a missed opportunity to further reduce health care costs. Thus, the apparent savings resulting from the introduction of generic drugs may not be fully realized unless the government and other third-party payers take a more active role in postgraduate drug education and investigation.
authors.affiliation: University of Michigan School of Medicine, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA. Bpitt@umich.edu
authors.forename: Bertram
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Pitt
mesh_terms: D002309:Cardiology / Q000191:economics* / Q000193:education; D011307:Drug Prescriptions / Q000191:economics; D004363:Drug Utilization / Q000191:economics; D016568:Drugs, Generic / Q000191:economics*; D017850:Economics, Pharmaceutical; D017048:Health Care Costs; D006801:Humans
chemical_list: D016568:Drugs, Generic