Prescriptions: Same Drug, Higher Price

Generic drugs contain exactly the same ingredients as name-brand medicines, so they provide handsome savings — right? Maybe not always, according to a new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The review of 891,862 prescriptions dispensed in 39 states found that while pharmacists invariably paid much less at wholesale for the generic drugs, they often marked up the prices of generics much more sharply than those of name brands. In some cases consumers paid even more for generics than for name brands. For example, generic conjugated estrogens cost less than the equivalent Premarin brand only 40% of the time.