Posted on August 20, 2012 by Greg Magnusson
You know how there are “generic alternatives available” for just about every older drug out there?I mean, who buys Tylenol brand Tylenol? Doesn’t everybody buy store-brand acetaminophen?
Well, veterinary prescription drugs suffer from a few quirks that you should be aware of, that make my life difficult and make your bill higher.
For instance, there are pharmacies out there called “compounding pharmacies” that can take raw ingredients and make them into capsules or chewies or whatever for your pet. So if, for instance, you wanted a 625mg capsule of amoxicillin and one was not commercially available, you could have that pharmacy make those capsules for your patient.
Cool, right?
Well, the flip side to this is that if there is a commercially available drug, FDA labelled for use in dogs and cats, in the dose and size near what you need for the patient, your veterinarian is legally required to prescribe you the FDA approved commercial drug. Obviously, this law is intended to protect not only the patients, but also the drug companies making these drugs. Which is all well and good.
What happens in veterinary medicine that does not happen in human medicine, though, is this: when a human drug goes off patent, dozens of smaller companies jump to make their own generic, FDA-approved versions of the same drugs. Prilosec goes off patent? Generic omeprazole becomes available on the shelf a few months later. These smaller companies know that even though they now have to jump through the same hoops the original company had to go through to get their generic version FDA approved, there is enough money out there in human medicine land to make it worthwhile.
With pets, though, after a dog and cat specific drug is invented and marketed for a few years, then goes off patent, sometimes there isn’t a company out there willing to jump in and make an FDA approved generic version, because there just isn’t enough profit in it for them.
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