Pfizer and Lilly lost big name-brand drugs to generic competitors a little over a year ago.
As Krugman notes, it should have been obvious to anybody that Part D would come in under budget, because most widely used brand drugs are going generic.
The French also take more prescription drugs than any other nation in Europe, and expect brand name drugs, not the cheaper generic version.
"And so that applies to brand name drugs as well as generic drugs, " he said.
To make matters worse, fewer brand new drugs are being approved, and the average value of new drugs is dropping.
And for those relatively stable Part D premiums seniors get much greater access to newer, brand name drugs than Medicaid beneficiaries.
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This month, the report honed in on a species of brand hijacking that clogs in-boxes daily: spam e-mails hawking name-brand discount drugs.
Obviously, a count of the number of new molecular entities (industry jargon for brand new drugs) is not the only measure of innovation.
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The playing field in that competition has just become a little friendlier to the makers of the brand name drugs: Pfizer, Sanofi, Bristol-Myers Squibb, GlaxoSmithKline.
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First, as much as groups like AARP like to complain about how the price of brand name drugs outpaces inflation, price increases aren't the main thing eating our money.
At the same time, many plans are starting to charge different amounts not just for different types of brand name drugs, but for different types of generic drugs, too.
Many doctors see a lot of brand name drugs that treat most, if not all, chronic conditions like high cholesterol, hypertension, asthma and diabetes available in cheaper generic form but paying to delay generics is unnecessarily keeping certain brand names on the market.
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Amidst the turmoil afflicting drug firms--last week Merck cut earnings forecasts for 2009 to well below analyst forecasts--biotech copycats are appealing because they will be far more expensive than traditional generic drugs but will still be cheaper to develop than brand-new drugs.
Generic drugs approved by FDA are of the same high quality and strength as brand-name drugs.
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But the high prices of many patent-protected drugs generate the revenues needed to underwrite the massive research and development expenses that the inventors of brand-name drugs incur.
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They will have to promote biosimilars to doctors, as they do for brand-name drugs.
The generic manufacturing and packaging sites must pass the same quality standards as those for brand-name drugs.
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The problem is that we expect generics to also be as safe and effective as the original brand-name drugs.
Next year a 50 percent decrease in all of the brand-name drugs in the doughnut hole will go into effect.
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The Obama administration wants Big Pharma to stop paying generic drug competitors to delay releasing cheaper versions of brand-name drugs.
That's because PBMs steer consumers away from generics and toward more expensive brand-name drugs, for which they're rewarded by manufacturers.
The trial goes to the heart of the escalating controversy over how much patent protection pricey brand-name drugs should get.
The company cited a wave of conversions from brand to generic drugs.
The magazine's analysis also found that, in general, patients report side effects at a similar rate for brand-name drugs as for generic versions.
Caremark points to a 2003 General Accounting Office report claiming that mail-order prices were 27% below retail for brand-name drugs and 53% less for generics.
Beyond that, drug company- discounts on brand-name drugs and federal subsidies and discounts for all drugs will gradually reduce the gap, eliminating it by 2020.
Teva the largest generic pharmaceutical company in the world, marketing about 400 generic medications and 50 brand-name drugs, with approximately 180 new generics awaiting FDA approval.
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Such pay-for-delay deals arise when generic companies file a challenge at the Food and Drug Administration to the patents that give brand-name drugs a 20-year monopoly.
You can search it to see whether your doctor is receiving drug company money to give speeches and talks to other doctors that help promote brand-name drugs.
Yet they take up to 90% of sales away from the comparable brand-name drugs whose makers risked the time and money to bring breakthrough treatments to market.
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