This week, I’m rerunning some popular posts. Click here to see the original post and comments from January 2019—complete with now-dated Bird Box references!
Oral generic drugs keep getting cheaper. The Food & Drug Administration (FDA) has intensified the generic industry’s competitive pressures with record drug approvals. The FDA’s actions, combined with the negotiating leverage of the large generic purchasing organizations, led to 2018’s persistent double-digit deflation in manufacturers’ selling prices for oral generic drugs.
Below, we update our analysis of these generic drug mega-buyers.
We estimate that for 2018, the three largest buyers accounted for more than 90% of total U.S. generic drug purchases from manufacturers. In 2019, acquisitions and contract switches will shift market share among these groups, but not diminish their impact. It's no surprise that manufacturers lose their minds when seeing these monster firms.
There are now fewer therapeutic areas with excess inflation, so future price reductions will be smaller. What’s more, some generic manufacturers have signaled their intention to exit highly competitive generic drug categories in which prices have dropped. Look for oral generic prices to stabilize—and possibly rise—over the next 12 to 18 months. Perhaps the blindfolds will come off?
P.S. Portions of this post have been adapted from our forthcoming 2019 Economic Report on U.S. Pharmacies and Pharmacy Benefit Managers. We'll be taking this updated and expanded edition out of our bird box on March 5!
Read more »
Source: Post feed
