Anderson Observer

As Congress continues to pile amendments onto national health care legislation at the pace of roughly 300 per week, little attention is being given to serious problems in the current structure which will likely go untouched if or when a bill makes it to law.

One such issue is the price regulation of generic drugs. At first blush, the idea appears sound, and if fact could be sound if implimented as intended. Major pharmaceutical companies are allowed a 20-year patent on drugs, which begins with clinical trials, effectively giving the companies seven to 12 years of exclusive rights to the medication. After that time, other comapanies are allowed to produce generic versions of the medication, containing identical active ingredients at, theoretically, lower costs.

Once a brand drug comes off patent, generic equivalents quickly emerge, but they cost far more than they need to because of FDA over-regulation and other factors driven mostly by greed.

Many health insurance companies require their clients to purchase generics when available, which has helped lead to companies which produce generics to inflate the price of some medications to an even higher price tag than their name brand counterparts. The hope is that many companies will produce the same generic medications, thus prompting competition. But sadly, this often is not the case. Tempted by a system which requires the purchase of generics, prices remain inflated, thus creating an ever greater burden on consumers.

The reason for high-priced generics is not because the active ingredients are expensive. On the contrary, compared with complicated nutrient extracts, the ingredients in drugs are usually synthetic chemicals that cost less than pennies a day. The culprit behind overpriced generic drugs is an archaic regulatory environment that functions to protect pharmaceutical financial interests, forcing consumers to pay artificially inflated prices for their generic medications, coupled with makes of generic drugs who see a consumer base ripe for the picking.

So as the health care debate rages on, it is time to turn our attention to things which can be fixed more quickly and with less partisan politics. New regulations requiring generic medications to reveal the cost of production of the almost-as-good medications would be a start, followed quickly by price regulations which reflect such production costs.

The annual cost of prescribed medication has more than doubled since the late 1990s to nearly $200 billion last year. Curbing these costs through regulating the cost of generic drugs would be one step in the right direction.

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