The running battle between brand-name drug makers and their generic rivals got big play at an educational forum put on as part of a Las Vegas trade show by Orange-based drug distributor Bergen Brunswig Corp.
During Bergen’s 2001 Healthcare Congress and Manufacturers’ Expo, presenters Bob McCurdy and Donnie Sullivan said that while generics made up around 40% of all prescriptions filled between 1995 and 2000, their dollar share slipped from 10% of all prescriptions filled in 1995 to 7.5% last year.
But the dollar drop tells more about new drugs than they do generics, according to the presenters.
“The trending information is interesting but also disturbing,” McCurdy said. “Probably a major reason (for it) is the introduction on the branding side of high-priced new drugs.”
McCurdy and Sullivan, who teach at Ohio Northern University in Ada, Ohio, also presented figures showing that 2.8 billion prescriptions were filled in the U.S. last year and that $140 billion was spent on prescriptions.
In terms of the top companies by number of prescriptions filled in 2000, the professors said that generics maker Watson Pharmaceuticals Inc., located just over the county line in Corona, led with 172 million prescriptions.
Mylan Laboratories Inc., a Pittsburgh-based maker of generic and brand-name drugs, ranked second with 162 million prescriptions.
Teva Pharmaceuticals Ltd. of Israel was third with 159 million. Teva, which sponsored the presentation, is considered a potential rival to Irvine-based Sicor Inc. when the generic biotechnology drug market opens up later this decade.
The professors also talked about two industry trade groups, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association of America, or PhRMA, and the Generic Pharmaceutical Association.
“PhRMA is the 100-pound gorilla. People seem to love or hate them,it takes the brunt of most of the criticism,” McCurdy said.
The biggest criticism directed at the brand-name drug industry is the amount of direct-to-consumer advertising it does, he said. Industry critics often allege that such appeals lead patients to ask their doctors for pricey drugs, driving up healthcare costs.
By contrast, McCurdy said the generic drug industry’s voice was fractured up until last year because it had more than one trade association. But it’s changing.
“The point that’s been made is that quality (of generics) is no longer an issue,” he said. “Generics are well liked by anyone laying out money.”
Sullivan’s portion of the presentation also talked about branded companies’ concerns about generic competition. One section covered “narrow therapeutic index” drugs,ones that have a small amount of difference between a dose that can help or kill a patient. Such drugs include levothyroxine, a thyroid treatment that’s been the center of a dispute between Watson and Abbott Laboratories Inc. of suburban Chicago.
Sullivan mentioned a study he did of a lobbying effort by the Health Alliance for NTI Patient Safety.
The alliance was trying to get legislation in place that would discourage the generic substitution of warfarin, a generic form of the Coumadin blood thinner.
“I asked them where they got their funding,” Sullivan said. “(Turns out) they were funded by DuPont, which gave them a large amount of money.”
DuPont Pharmaceuticals Co. makes Coumadin.
Generic drugs may have won a round last week, though, when a federal appeals court declined to reverse a lower court ruling that invalidated a patent until 2003 on Prozac, Eli Lilly & Co.’s superstar antidepressant drug. Lilly has said it plans to appeal the matter to the U.S. Supreme Court.
