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The generic drug manufacturers are a lot at fault. The major drug companies do all the R&D; then the generic companies come along and copy the formula. It's no wonder the major manufacturers have to charge high prices -- they get undercut by the generics. And NO, generic formulations are NOT the same, regardless of everything the insurance companies & pharmacies try to tell you. A generic is "approved" if its potency is within 20% of the brand name. That means, for example, for a medication of which you are to take 100 mg, you could get a 80 mg dose on one refill and a 120 mg refill on the next ... a 50% increase between refills!!! Even if doses were the same, milligram for milligram, things such as the pressure used to create a tablet alter the metabolism of the drug. (Bytheway, I'm yelling at the situation, not you.)

Oh I know dear Pirate. They put me on 'generic' Allegra that just hit the market... I've taken 2 doses, and I'm sneezing my head off by 10pm. It's supposed to last all day, but I can so tell it's not. Funny enough, I experienced the same thing with Advil vs. generic Ibuprofen. Wassup with the FDA these days .... oh yeah.... government agency! :P

The generic drug manufacturers are a lot at fault. The major drug companies do all the R&D; then the generic companies come along and copy the formula. It's no wonder the major manufacturers have to charge high prices -- they get undercut by the generics.

The way it works is the company that does the R&D patents the drug, and then the FDA drags out the approval process, eating up massive amounts of time. Years and years and years, and billions of dollars of expense jumping through all the hoops.

By the time the medicine is finally approved for sale, there really isn't that much time left to sell it before the patent runs out! Thus, they high prices charged, to recoup the R&D while they can.

If sanity were to prevail, they wouldn't start the clock running on the patent-protection period until the drug received approval. But, we're talking about the government, with so many compromised "interests" and motivations, incestuous "revolving-door" relationships between "regulators" and industry... the system's gone mad, and it's the NOBODIES like you and me who end up taking it up the bung.