Prescription drugs refer to the medication that is prescribed by the doctor and is made available at the pharmacists only after you produce an appropriate authentication from the doctor to allow buying these drugs. By adopting this practice the government aims at reducing the abuse or unsupervised use of these drugs. They ensure that the doctors are able to monitor the patients’ progress by the use of these drugs specified by them. These prescription drugs are characterized into two types namely, brand name drugs and generic drugs. Amongst these the brand name drugs as the name suggests is a drug possessing a patent and poses a brand name. On the contrary, a generic drug is the same as the brand name drug but without a patent or a brand name.

Prescription generic medications posses the same active ingredients like that in the branded drugs and they are bioequivalent of their patented counterparts. Normally, drug companies manufacture generic drugs in the event of expiry of the patent on the branded medications. They are also used in regions where there are no patent been registered. Since the pharmaceutical or the drug manufacturing companies spend an enormous amount of money on gaining the patent the resulting cost of the brand names is much higher as compared to the generic drugs. This is an exact reason why health insurance companies refuse to cover brand name drugs if their generic versions are available in the market.

Generic drugs tend to look a little different than their branded counterparts but since they have the same composition and no different healing effects they are a better option if you plan on saving a lot of money invested on the branded drugs. When the patent for the brand expires competitors are able to sell generic prescription drugs with huge savings to the customers. This also proves to be profitable for the generic drug manufacturers since unlike the branded drug manufactures they do not pay for the research and development costs of the drug.

All generic drugs share the same quality and effect of that of their branded counterparts. However, not all branded drugs have their respective generic versions. Only about half of the existing brand name drugs have their respective generic drugs. Unfortunately, it takes about 20 years for the patent on the brand name drugs to expire so until that time generic drugs are not available in mass quantities to the customers. Moreover, drug companies flock medical magazines with advertisements for their branded products to encourage doctors to prescribe the brand-name, rather than their generic equivalents on their prescription pads. On the other hand, there might be legitimate reasons for prescribing branded drugs instead of generic drugs. On the whole, it is both safe and profitable to use generic prescription drugs unless you have allergies towards certain inactive ingredients of the medication.