Competition between generic and branded drugs

I decided to analyze the world of generic and branded because I am interest in pharmaceuticals to properly take care of myself by myself. I thought also it was interesting and to study in detail this topic to be awake of my general practitioner’ s prescribing decisions even from an economical point of view, answer and motivate the typical question “Are generics really as good as brand-name drugs?”. Finally, I considered challenging to study the driving forces behind the coexistence of generics and branded drugs. I chose this point as the focus of my thesis and I organized this work throughout 4 chapters. The first chapter is the background. It gathers both all the pharmacological information and classifications of drugs related to the generic-brand competition to better catch their role and involvement in the competitive war and the different marketing approval paths to follow to enter the market and be competitive. The second chapter added other regulatory guidelines comparing the EU, with a focus on Italy, and America. I introduced the rules about: financial incentives to sustain the generics’ uptake, pricing, reimbursement, advertising and IP regulation. The third chapter is the real hearth. It is centred on: the effects of pharmaceutical regulation over the entry of generics, the competitive strategies used by manufacturers to obstacles their rivals, the literature about the efficacy of the pricing methods, the generics’ paradox, the implications of pseudo-generic drugs and the competition between generic biologics and generic pharmaceuticals The last chapter showed the impact of some phenomena like the brand-loyalty and the economical reasons that justify the prescribing decisions of physicians, the attitude of pharmacists towards generics, the importance of their role and finally patient’s perception and attitude towards generics. Statistical data showed that: despite all the efforts to support generic drugs, branded ones are still preferred by physicians and patients above all in case of serious diseases, even they are more expensive. The major revenues come from the sale of originators. Intermediate products such as the pseudo-generics are quite irrelevant, they do not reduce the price, the real war is between pure generic and originators. There is room for improvement and gains of generic manufacturers, but the challenge is still hard because it is also a mental matter.