Are cheaper drugs to be expected on the market?

Autor: Ioana David 26.09.2010

The international drug market could start the era of cheap products after patents of products with tens of billions of dollars in sales expire, which will allow other producers to launch an aggressive campaign of lower prices, and thus allow for a decline in healthcare spending.
Among the products that will lose their patent over the next few years are Lipitor, produced by Pfizer, the world's best-selling drug, as well as Plavix, produced by Sanofi-Aventis in collaboration with Bristol-Myers Squibb, the world's number two best-seller.
In Romania local drug producers, which only include generic drugs in their portfolios, i.e. products that start being manufactured when the patent of an original drug expires, have launches of tens of drugs scheduled, which means the international generics fever will also partly reflect in the Romanian market. The National Health Insurance House encourages consumption of generics and has implemented several measures to this effect, after its representatives said on several occasions that expensive drugs saw an unjustified rise over the past few years.