Sick and tired of high drug costs? You're not alone. Americans spend more than 150 billion dollars per year on pharmaceuticals, and with costs rising all the time, many are looking to generic alternatives. These products promise the same benefits as their name-brand equivalents, but at a fraction of the cost. When considering something as important as your personal health, do generic drugs measure up?
The FDA requires both generic and brand medicines to both meet the same high quality standards for approval. If they don’t, FDA won’t approve them. It’s that simple.
Sometimes, you hear people talk about active pharmaceutical ingredients (API), which are the ingredients that make the drug work in the body. To be approved by FDA, the generic medicine must contain the same amount of active ingredient as the brand.
Brand and generic medicines also contain inactive ingredients—things like colors, flavors, and binders. Because the size or color of a pill may be trademarked, the FDA allows different manufacturers to use different inactive ingredients. However, ALL inactive ingredients must be approved by the FDA for safety and efficacy. This allows patients to have the confidence that the medicines they are taking—whether they are generic or brands—will have the same results.
Generic companies often obtain their active and inactive ingredients from the very same suppliers as the brand companies. The ingredients also are checked for impurities and other quality attributes, and they must conform to U.S. Pharmacopoeia (USP) standards. USP is the non-profit, scientific body chartered by Congress to set standards for drug purity in this country.
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