Generic medicines are a critical component of the US healthcare system. Access to low-cost generic prescription drugs allows millions of Americans to comply with their doctors' medication orders while saving billions of dollars in costs. But the growth of the generics industry, coupled with a chronic lack of resources for the Food and Drug Administration's Office of Generic Drugs, has created a situation that neither the industry nor the agency considers acceptable.Today, nearly 76% of all prescriptions dispensed in the US are filled using FDA-approved generic equivalents of the brand-name counterparts.That figure may be slightly misleading because it includes drugs that have not yet come off patent and are available as brand only. When looking just at those medicines for which there are generic alternatives, consumers choose the generic for 92% of their prescriptions. As a result, generic drug use generated an astounding dollar 138 billion in savings in 2009 alone, according to a July 2010 analysis by IMS Health.
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