Generic drugs in cardiology: will they reduce health care costs?

The introduction of generic drugs should lower health care costs by reducing the price of drugs. The realization of this goal may, however, not be fully achieved: generic drugs may be underused or misused in comparison to prescription drugs because of a lack of ongoing postgraduate physician education. More importantly, there is little incentive to explore new indications for soon-to-be generic drugs and drugs that are already generic. The failure to explore new indications for soon-to-be and existing generic drugs may result in a missed opportunity to further reduce health care costs. Thus, the apparent savings resulting from the introduction of generic drugs may not be fully realized unless the government and other third-party payers take a more active role in postgraduate drug education and investigation.