Opinion: Unaffordable prescription drugs: the real legacy of the Hatch-Waxman Act
How is it possible to have a prescription drug price crisis when 90% of prescriptions are filled with generic drugs that cost, on average, $1 a day? The answer: The remaining 10% of prescriptions have an average cost of $20 a day and account for 80% of all prescription drug spending.
High prices for branded medicines are one consequence of the Drug Price Competition and Patent Term Restoration Act of 1984, better known as the Hatch-Waxman Act, the same law that made low-cost generic drugs widely available. To pass that law, Congress yielded to demands from the powerful pharma lobby for longer and stronger monopolies for new drugs. This payoff to an already highly profitable industry has wiped out the savings that the widespread use of generic drugs should have produced.
