How can anyone save money by buying generic medicines?

How can anyone save money by buying generic medicine?

Just before learning how to save by opting for generic medicines first let us understand what is generic medicines.


What is Generic Medicine?


 Generic drugs contain the same active ingredients, in the very same strength, as brand-name drugs. When a medicine is first developed, the pharmaceutical company that discovers and markets it receives a patent on its new drug. The patent usually lasts for 20 years, to give the originating company a chance to recoup its research investment. After the patent expires, a generic version of the drug may become available. Generics are marketed under the drug's chemical, or "generic," name and meet the same FDA quality and effectiveness standards as the original.
Generic pharmaceutical manufacturers must prove to the FDA that their version of a drug:
1.contains the same active ingredient;
2.is identical in strength, dosage form, and route of administration;
3.has the same indications, dosing, and labelling; and
4.provides the same efficacy and safety profile to patients.

So Generic medicines actually contain the same active ingredients as the branded drug but differ from the branded drugs with respect to inactive ingredients. That may not be the problem unless a Patient is allergic to a certain inactive ingredient.


How to save by buying Generic Medicine?


So if you have a branded medicine in your hand and you feel it is very costly then you can find a way to save money. Yeah that is possible but you just need to spend two minutes on it, lol that is a very high time to invest on but please do invest your two minutes in it. So you could just go to medplus website or 1mg.com and just type in your branded medicine name and when you click search it will also show you a list of substitutes for the medicine and in it also shows by how much percentage the drug is cheaper and costlier.


Well, every concept becomes easy with the example. So let me just share an example:


So let's take a medicine which is used to treat Type 2 diabetes and which is the most common tablet used for diabetes. The medicine name is Metformin 500mg. Well on comparing the cost of companies that manufacture metformin drug in popular websites like 1mg and Medplus, we find metformin at different price scales ranging from 7.81 to 15rs per strip. Well now if you want to cut down expenses of your medicines you can opt for metformin tablet at 7.81 rs strip and you can save almost 50% on one tablet. And even many online platforms like 1mg and Netmeds provide discount up to 20%, so through this way, we can save another 20% accounting to total savings up to 70% on the medicines we buy. So if we buy medicines of 5000rs every month we can bring medicine expenses up to 1500rs. Well by this technique every month we can save up to 3500rs and every year we can save up to 42000 and what if you are using certain medicines for 15-20 year then you can save up to 6 to 7 lakhs which is a big amount.  


Well, thanks for viewing my post and you are welcome to post any comments.