Generic drugs plans

At the same time, expenditures on pharmaceutical products continue to grow and often outpace expenditures for other consumer products. Pharmaceutical expenditures concern not only consumers, but government payers, private health plans, and employers as well. Generic drugs offer opportimities for significant cost savings over brand-name drug products. 

These four criteria form a matrix of 16 possible drug candidate types. A generic drug development plan for what most drug development scientists consider to be the most difficult drug candidate to develop successfully is shown... 

In May 1996, when Ciba-Geigy and Sandoz presented their plans for a merger, they announced that the new company, to be called Novartis, would spin off its remaining specialty chemical businesses. In the late 1990s Novartis maintained five principal lines of business pharmaceuticals, generic drugs, consumer health (primarily OTC products), animal health, and CIBA Vision. Prescription pharmaceuticals accounted for 60 percent of sales. The company was quite profitable, with net income exceeding 20 percent of sales. 

Offer a choice of at least two drug plans that will cover both brand name and generic drugs. 

Ray Gilmartin has cited two reasons for not fighting the generics First, the less that health plans spend on old prescription drugs, the more they have for the new ones Merck hopes to introduce. Second, Wall Street cares a lot more about what s next in the pipeline than it does about a few hundred million dollars of lost profits. 

---